Giving away 1TB WD green HDD

[Ghost]

You could have used the drive as a Network drive or a drive to mirror your other drive in case something gets corrupted.

Anyways I have almost 5TB of storage so it would be selfish of me to try and get this drive.

Good luck to everyone entering!

[Kilmer02]

I dont have any important data I need to store, so its of no use to me!

[IdeaStormer]

Note to the writers, he never said the drive was in working order or if it had/has bad sectors. :p

[MTROB]

Here is the story of my first build. I am thirteen and have just built my first computer for gaming, video editing, and photo editing. I purchased the parts on the 26th at the NCIX Burnaby store where I waited for a hour outside of the store to get in my part of the boxing day sales. When I got home I got the camera out took some pictures of all the boxes then got to work. Everything went smoothly and it was together that night and I was able to access the BIOS on the first try. About a week later I made up my mind of Windows 8 vs Windows 7 and chose Windows 8. I loaded the OS and installed the drivers. Right now windows 8 is shutting down but the computer is not as per my thread in the OS section. But I am very happy with it and it has been running planetside 2 very well. I am now looking forward to my next build, which might be for my parents.

[Kilmer02]

@Jorge, Lol, it is working, I assure you!

@MTROB Thanks for your entry and good luck!

[Bob]

Did you get my PM?

[Kilmer02]

Yes, I have gotten it, thanks for your entry!

[Kayn]

Topic 3 - Give me the story of your first build!

This is the story of my first build, which happens to be about a month ago. I've haven't been a stranger to tech since I've been interested in my young years, the farthest I can remember where I was interested in computer/games was around the age of 5. Well anyways, I have been a big gamer on the console and would play games for hours and hours but I would always have a hand me down computer from my uncle who works for a tech company. Until last year I finally got a brand new computer that was new and fast. When getting that computer it has made me start gaming on the PC and made me want to start learning how a computer works and how the components with each other. Usually once I get my mind on something that interest me in any kind of way I kind of obsess about it for a couple of weeks or until I run out of articles to read. When reading about custom computers and how parts are picked out for specific purposes for either gaming, work desk, or an editing machine I looked at my computer and saw how under powered it is compared to these custom computers. After researching on what kind of computer I wanted to build and saving up the money to get the parts I finally had my final parts picked out. The two weeks I had to wait for the parts to come in was the longest two weeks I have waited, but once I had all my parts in my hands I could not wait for it to be built by my hands. I remember starting at 6 PM when I started taking everything out and putting it in the case. I had the most fun putting it together that I sat in my living room from start to finish for about 6 hours. The hardest part of the build was the easiest parts. I think I spent about an hour just trying to put on my heatsink (CM 212 evo) because I could not align the screw holes and I spent about another 45 minutes trying to put in my 8pin CPU connector. When I was finished, which was around 12 am, I went into my room to install windows 7. I had about two heart attacks when turning on my computer, the first one was it didn't turn on at all when I pressed the power button but it turns out that I didn't turn on the power supply and the second was I didn't connect my DVI cable to the video card so I was sitting there for 10 minutes about to die trying to figure out why it wouldn't show up on my monitor. After installing and setting everything up it is working perfectly and I am using it to write this essay :).

Good luck to who wins and thank you for the giveaway

[Kilmer02]

Thank you for your entry, and good luck!

[Metalicz]

I suppose I'll go with topic 1.

I don't know if I deserve it anymore than anyone else does, but man do I certainly need it. Been unemployed and unable to actually land of job of any description for almost 3 years now and affording new parts is tough considering. Over the past while almost all my HDDs have died while out of warranty range and I am currently running my system off a SATA2 Seagate 40GB drive for boot and at SATA2 WD 80GB drive for storage. It is PAINFUL to have such a limit on what I can do since most of the games I want to play are taking up anywhere from 5-30GB of space. So yeah, I MUST WIN! lol

[stairs2195]

my first PC build was back about two years when i was almost completely new to the build your own PC concept none the less i thought i would build my own gaming rig, so i looked around loads of different sites to price up my component the specs at the time were CPU: I5 (2300), GPU: MSI 450 GTS, RAM: 4GB G-SKILL,MOBO: MSI H61-P23, PSU: just one that came with a cheap ass case (yes dont laugh i used this psu for about 4/5 months as i was completely new to all of this and didnt know the dangers of cheap ass psu's). when my components arrived i looked up how to peice them together so as you do i started building my machine( outside of the case first) when i realised i had forgot to buy a hard disk, so i talked nice to one of my mates and he kindly lent me one untill i bought one myself. and with my surprise the machine powered on everything was going brilliant, so i pieced it back together inside the case screwed everything back in and tried to power on but it powered on but cut out 2 seconds later so with my lack of experiance i phoned up my mate asking for his help so i waited for him to come over and try to diagnose the problem so we took the motherboard out of the case only for him to call me an idiot because i forgot the motherboard spacers on the case thus what was shorting it out. so we put everything together again and guess what?... i worked perfect :) then my joy was shot down when my friend told me i had to buy a new psu due to the other one being crap so a few months later i bought a new psu it was a mushkin volta which served me well for a year then blew up. but when my new psu arrived my friend asked for my old one for a crappy server of his so i gave it away to him... a few hours later he rang me up to tell me he put it in his case and the whole thing just sparked and blew up litterally. hope you found this as funny as i do now but i think i should say i have learned a hell of alot since then

[Kilmer02]

Thanks for your entries and good luck!

@ everybody I'm loving these stories!

[Wheres_The_Money]

thanks for doing this i would really like to be able to win i have a build i did close to the summer and i was not able to buy a drive and i had to use a old 2.5 Hitachi 320GB from a broken laptop the drive is slow and i am running of space on it only has about 40 gigs free if i were to win this drive i could use the money i was going to use for a drive on something else like a better graphics card i have a GTX 460 i thank you again for his and wish luck to everyone who want it also

[NotSoHonestAbe]

Topic 2- What first got me into tech, namely building PCs, was when my dad was building us a new desktop for the house. I was rather bored at that time, so being the 10 year old I was, I went in to see my dad. I saw him sitting on the floor with all these weird looking things (which I later found out to be a processor, motherboard, etc.) on the floor. I probably said something along the lines of "what's all this stuff?" and then we started talking about how this was the new computer he was building for us. Of course I had no idea what all this stuff was at the time, so I said "but this doesn't look like a computer." And then he started explaining to me how everything did a certain, and in a couple hours, I built the computer. I was a natural. And if I weren't so bored that long time ago, I would never have been the total computer geek I am today.

[ramzorz]

Okiedokie then, subject 3.

This kid I knew from Jr. high. He was decent. Listened to good music and rap and he was really white. He has setup an i7 machine and wanted to get rid of his quad core Intel Core generation machine. I still wasn't too much into hardware at that point and was mostly a Windows geek. I bought it off of him for $70. Just the motherboard, CPU fan and the CPU. I had bought a 5670 to go along and a 500 watt PSU (that I still use today), and of course, an old IDE hard drive that I had laying around. The only thing I didn't buy was a case. So, I made this plastic stand for it that my dad helped me make and I had the thing open, out in the air for about a year. It was pretty cool but extremely idiotic. Total so far for the PC: $205.

Sooner or later, something was bound to fail, and so it did. The onboard audio (out of all things) blew up. I put a drop of water on the Realtek chip and the water would evaporate within seconds. I bought a Rocketfish soundcard. The build is now $230. About a month after I buy the card, the entire motherboard dies. Pitty. I start saving up for a new build and scrap the the dead build for parts. I end up selling the Rocketfish soundcard for $30, $5 more than retail. Now I'm down $200. I sell the processor itself for $100. I kept the PSU and the graphics card.

I just recently bought a new card for my current build and I'm trying to get rid of the 5670, but the thing is, I only spent $100 on my first build that played Crysis on the highest settings. Hopefully I can sell the 5670 to a sucker for $75 and only spen a total of $25 on my first build... twenty-five United States dollars for a gaming rig. Needless to say, I was pretty proud of that build. :D

[TechBlitZ]

I believe I deserve this WD Green drive as I have worked very hard in order to get into University and cannot afford to treat myself with such pleasures such as more storage.

If I won this WD Green drive I would use it as storage, too store all of my brothers important documents on and portfolio work, as he has just started his own website creation business and cannot afford privileges such as large storage areas atm.

[VictorB]

Are there shipping restrictions? :) So is it worldwide or only in your country?

[Kilmer02]

Worldwide, but I can't say how long it will take at that point.

[zeros]

I chose Topic 2- What got you into the world of tech? Back in 2001 my Parents got a divorce and had a computer that nether one of them wanted so I took it home and it stayed in my closet for 3 months. I came home from work one day bored and decided I wanted to play solitaire so I pulled it out and stared at the back of the pc tell my GF at the time got home and told her I didn't have any Idea how to plug it in LOL so she showed me. I started liking it so I asked her uncle if he would teach me how PC's worked. He owns his own Computer company in Kansas city' date=' Kansas. He taught me the basics around windows and how to run DOS about six months later I went back to him and showed him what I had learned my self. He looked at me in surprise and I said what. He told me I just crammed 5 years of knowledge in 6 months. I said really. He told me I should go to school for it. So I went home and bought every book I could get my hands on that was about computers, I studied for one year before I went to collage. In collage my teacher told me I was really advanced and taught me more stuff then the class knew, I went to school every day and hung out with my teacher all day,.I did the hole schools networking with him, Helped him build firewalls for the school and helped him fix any PC's at the school. about a year into school they replaced all the computers at my school and I asked my teacher what they do to the old ones. He said throw them away so I asked him if I could have them all he said yes I had over 230 PC's and 15 servers. I was the fastest person to ever graduate from my school I did 8 years of school in 4 and a half years and the only one to get a 4.0 average all 4 and half years I was there. I got my associates degree in Computer programing, a Masters degree in computer Networking and a Masters Degree in Computer science. Karma is a good thing and never hurts. I believe strongly in karma. Just like paying it forward. Thank you for this nice giveaway. I wish everybody the best of luck on winning [/quote']

I like your story :)

[zeros]

Well I guess I choose 2. too. It all started with a computer school that I wanted to attend somewhere in 1998, I was 6. I don't remember why I wanted to attend to it but me and my sister were there, I've played Lion King, Aladin and Prince when the teacher let us. These are my first memories about computers. Then in 2000-2001 my mother bought me(and my sister) a PC it was a Pentium 3(quite expensive at that time, even though we weren't "rich"). And after about six month from having that PC I started to do allot of stuff with it eventually crashing it. Then we had to call my neighbor (also my cousin) to re-install windows 98 on it. He re-installed it so many times that i already knew how to do it so I didn't have to call him anymore and I became to know allot about computers, enough to fix all PC's of my friends and not so good friends. Then in 2007 I've become more addicted to computers and technology. This was because father was in Iraq as a driver and when he came back he got me allot of stuff including my first laptop, MP3 players, routers (I've changed one of those about a month ago). And allot of other electronics some of them needed to be fixed and I did my best with them. Also this same year (2007) my father connected me to the internet. And from here on I like everything that needs electricity. Not long after that I was building my own PC's, as the 1st PC bought and built totally by me was in 2009, and I still use it.

[ericlee30]

I chose Topic 2- What got you into the world of tech? Back in 2001 my Parents got a divorce and had a computer that nether one of them wanted so I took it home and it stayed in my closet for 3 months. I came home from work one day bored and decided I wanted to play solitaire so I pulled it out and stared at the back of the pc tell my GF at the time got home and told her I didn't have any Idea how to plug it in LOL so she showed me. I started liking it so I asked her uncle if he would teach me how PC's worked. He owns his own Computer company in Kansas city' date=' Kansas. He taught me the basics around windows and how to run DOS about six months later I went back to him and showed him what I had learned my self. He looked at me in surprise and I said what. He told me I just crammed 5 years of knowledge in 6 months. I said really. He told me I should go to school for it. So I went home and bought every book I could get my hands on that was about computers, I studied for one year before I went to collage. In collage my teacher told me I was really advanced and taught me more stuff then the class knew, I went to school every day and hung out with my teacher all day,.I did the hole schools networking with him, Helped him build firewalls for the school and helped him fix any PC's at the school. about a year into school they replaced all the computers at my school and I asked my teacher what they do to the old ones. He said throw them away so I asked him if I could have them all he said yes I had over 230 PC's and 15 servers. I was the fastest person to ever graduate from my school I did 8 years of school in 4 and a half years and the only one to get a 4.0 average all 4 and half years I was there. I got my associates degree in Computer programing, a Masters degree in computer Networking and a Masters Degree in Computer science. Karma is a good thing and never hurts. I believe strongly in karma. Just like paying it forward. Thank you for this nice giveaway. I wish everybody the best of luck on winning [/quote']

I like your story :)

Thank you zeros :)

[Kilmer02]

Only 2 days left in the contest! Better make final entries!

[rufee]

Story of my first build:

It was early summer in 2009, when i had won a competition on a local tech website for Nvidia 3D glasses kit, mind you it was the year they came out so it was a good win as far as i knew :) . Though at the time i was running a Pentium 4 machine which i got from a cousin 2 years back because he had no internet due to a newly constructed house which was blocking his wireless connection. Because the Pentium was no near the minimum requirements for the glasses to work I though why not get myself a new pc ? The first thing that came to mind that I wasn't going to buy a pre-assembled system, because the motherboards they put in those things break down fast, I was going to build my own system, mind you I was around 14 at the time. So I went on the forums looking for what kind of platform to base it on, asking my friends for what they had. Though being a long time Intel fanboy and having used a Pentium 3 machine for 8 years it wasn't such a hard choice to make. I was quite tech savvy even back then so after a few months of searching, researching I settled upon Intel's q6600 processor and an Asus p5n-d motherboard to go with, which was a great overclocking platform then, though i never had the guts to push it more than the stock speed and if im not mistaken the first i7's had showed up then, but they were quite expensive as well so that didn't change my mind, also the parts i had settled upon in my country were quite expensive at the time I had to think up a cheaper way to get them. Having recently acquired the ability to purchase stuff online I though i will buy my stuff from ebay at relatively low cost compared to what retailers and e-tailers were offering then, though I was quite wrong, but more on that later. I roughly calculated the price of the machine and was quite happy with it. So one day I mustered up the courage to ask my father for a loan, I rode my bicycle to his garage (he is a car electrician) and asked for some money, to my surprise he agreed to lend me some, I was expecting a NO followed by a long talk after about why not. I already had the list of stuff i would be getting so having added the money to my fathers card account I went to ebay to find my stuff, I wanted all the high end stuff I could get, the first thing I ordered was a EVGA 9800gt card, I really wanted an EVGA card because they were impossible to get in my country back then and are still quite hard now, also they were well regarded back then, and that later I could brag to my friends that I got an EVGA card and you don't hehe :). The processor was the hardest to get, I lost 4 auctions for it, but in the end i got it for a good bargain, it was cheaper by a double the amount I would have paid for it in my country. The other parts were easier to get. So after a week or so I had purchased all the stuff I wanted: Intel q6600, Asus p5n-d mobo, OCZ platinum 2x2gb ram, EVGA 9800gt, OCZ stealthXtreme 750w psu, which failed after a few years, only having to learn that OCZ were replacing those defective psu's after I had already disassembled it :( . Those were the components I bought from ebay, after a week and a half they arrived all except for the graphics card, I had to pay 21% of the price to customs for importing stuff, that bumped the overall price quite a bit. I though they lost the card in shipping so I was terrified, though I later asked a person in the post office had they received a shipment in my name, turned out the guy who sent me the card had mixed up my address so I got the part last (I was the first part I ordered, see the irony ? :D ). The day had come to put the new pc together, I bought a cheap defective case to put the parts in, though it came to haunt me later as it bent the motherboard a bit. And i got myself a 1 TB hard drive because why not, I haven't got it from ebay because I feared it would get destroyed in shipping. US -> EU quite a bumpy ride. So I unboxed the motherboard and found out that the big heatsink on the p5n-d (look it up on google) had come loose in shipping and had destroyed 4 or more capacitors by moving around, I was scared shitless as it was covering the chipset and I though it was destroyed. Though I haven't given up hope yet, i called my friend which I had lent my gf5500 (if im not mistaken the model) to, I got it back and took off the 2 push-pins which held the gf's cooler on and put them on the big mobo's heatsink (it takes 4 pins, but 2 were enough :D ). It was time to put it all together, I chipped off some paint from the radiator to attach a grounding wire to myself (You never know, when you will ESD something :D ), I carefully put the cpu in the 775 socket. When it was time to lower the lever I was scared to do it because it seemed that it was applying too much pressure to the cpu and it would break, but I did it anyway and the cpu was still in one piece. I installed the graphics card and was about to connect the VGA cable to the card when I felt a shock from the powered on CRT monitor, that was the third time I was scared shitless because I thought I had fried the mobo, I was still ghetto grounded to the radiator by a wire at that time that's why I got shocked. So with everything hooked up the time had come to turn it on for the first time, I had already lost the hope that it would work so I had nothing to lose. I shorted the power pins on the header, and crossed my fingers. The fans started spinning, then I heard the most relieving beep of my life, and then a big P5N-D logo appeared on my CRT screen (Compatibility, Stability, Reliability the 3 words that would stay in my mind forever). I couldn't believe it worked. So that is the story of my first build, the overall build cost me more than double the amount I figured, but what the hell yeah ?. I'm still running it with 4 broken and bent capacitors, upgraded the graphics to a GTX 560ti, changed that broken PSU to a Cooler Master 550gx (Had to return to the Pentium 4 machine for 2 months before I could afford a new PSU :D ), threw away the CRT after 12 years of use (Mind you it still works :D ) got a 120hz benq lcd. Enjoying my 3D experience. Honestly I didn't think it would run for more than 2 years, but here I am. I am still sometimes surprised how cpu's and electronics work in general giving that they are made of such microscopic components.

The drive would be great for me to make backups in, because recently I deleted the partition that had everything I had on it :(

Anyway thanks for reading my first build story :)

[Davo-Meerkat]

In the early 2000s I began to play diablo on my Father’s PC, which eventually evolved into my ‘Runescape’ machine where I spent hours chopping logs, and of course fishing shrimps. From this point in my computing career, ‘Santa’ delivered a new computer under the tree! Five years from now, I am still using the same machine to in recent years complete all of my assessment items for high school, whilst (inevitably) gaming a lot. It is at this point in which, I presume, most of my audience will be wandering what my first ever exciting build was… however this is where a spanner is ‘thrown in the works’. I’ve never brought to life my very own build, unless you count the time where I was around ten years old and setup a computer myself by plugging in all of the cables and installing ‘Monopoly’. This is one of the key reasons as to why I believe the 1 TB WD Green HDD will be of great use to me; it will provide significant aid in developing my very own build!

As briefly outlined previously I have been interested in computers and technology for several years now. I have explored computers, studied IPT in the last three years of my schooling career, and watched a hand full of my close friends (one of which is a regular user of LinusTech) put together their very own builds. Although I have had a keen interest in building my own PC, and have even theoretically planned it with my friend, I have not taken the big step and commenced building. Being seventeen and only recently commenced my job as a kitchen hand in a café (WOOT dishes) I have numerous economic issues holding me back from commencing my build. Having the HDD component too my build provided for would prove as a great start to developing my first build and could have so many advantages. As my current budget is approximately eight hundred dollars, being provided a HDD could be huge for my build; money from my budget could be freed up and spent on heaps of upgrades, one of which I would deeply look into being an SSD.

Winning the competition for the HDD would of course allow for a huge economic advantage, however more importantly, it would provide a prime opportunity for me to delve into the world of technology at a whole new level! I am uber keen to further my knowledge as a young man, and I believe this is just one of the ways to do it. Thank you very much and good luck to all competitors!

Regards, David.

[kmo_9000]

So I hope you don't mind, I choose to incorporate all three topics into one since they are all kind of related.

Topic 1- Why do you deserve the drive and what will you do with it if you won?

Well, I personally don't actually don't need any extra space. I know a friend who is in school right now for biochemistry and he is not in a position to be building a computer of his own right now (a gaming computer anyway). So what I did was put together some spare parts I had and built him a computer that I am giving to him for free (4850, E5700, Asus G41 mobo, 2gb ram ect.). Problem is the HDD in it is an old 250gb WD blue that is really really slow. Games will actually freeze while waiting for the drive to load a new area. So if you gave me the drive I would give it to him and it would make a pretty big difference for him.

In any case, my giving him this computer is sort of my way of introducing him to the world of computer building. Being able to build computers has changed my life and the lives of my friends. Right now all of the people I am close with have custom computers mostly due to my influence and help. I don't mean to be self-righteous or anything, I just think that having a powerful custom built computer is something everyone should have.

Topic 2- What got you into the world of tech?

I was able to build my first computer really because of an old friend of mine from high school. He taught me the basics and helped me build my first computer. I learned the rest through various computer forums and through building computers for friends and acquaintances over the years. Funny thing, that same friend moved away for a bit and recently moved back into the same city to go back to school. I also gave him an old case and some other spare parts to help him build a computer for school recently too.

Topic 3- Give me the story of your first build!

My first build was an AMD build with 2gb of ram and an 8400gt. I actually broke a pin on the CPU and had to buy a second CPU for it. I don't really consider this my first build though because I sold it within weeks of getting it because I wanted to build an Intel build with my friend I mentioned in Topic 2. I was torn between choosing an E8400 or a Q6600. I actually bought the E8400, case, motherboard and everything. Of course I had to change my mind and return it all a week later to get the Q6600.

In retrospect it was a waste of money due to the restocking fee and other factors, but it was a learning experience so I have no regrets. The final was a Q6600 + 8800GT which I made it last until only recently upgrading to a LGA 2011 build with a 3820 and crossfire 6950's. I can say with certainty that I'm not done building, and I fully well plan on teaching as many people I meet who will listen about the benefits of building your own computer.