I’m waiting at my door for my big Amazon Prime Day purchase: a 1TB portable hard drive.
That’s right, I bought exactly one thing during the 48-hour Prime Day sale. I looked at everything from swimming pools, luggage, computers, tools and even clothing. I suggested a queen-size mattress with memory foam to my wife, who looked at me like I was carrying Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson on her shoulders.
In the end, I was too shy to spend hundreds of dollars on various discounted items. That’s the problem with Amazon Prime Day: everything looks good, but you can’t buy everything. But then this paralysis, brought on by indecision and a dwindling wallet, drives you—or at least me—to give up on everything.
As I noted last week, I don’t really need anything Amazon is selling, but I want a lot of things. To avoid confusion, overspending, and more stares from my wife, I went to my safe space, which is storage.
I agree with my colleague Michelle Rae Uy, who observed during Prime Day that we all always need more storage. I’ve been thinking about buying another portable hard drive for some time now. I have an 11 year old Seagate 500MB portable drive that, while it looks good, I worry it could fail at any time. If this happens, backups will be required in four different jobs. I cannot allow that to happen.
The prices of portable drives have been falling for some time, especially the cheaper spinning hard drives. SSDs still tend to be more expensive.
It didn’t take me long to find a good option, a $43 Toshiba Canvio Basics 1TB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive (opens in new tab) (10% off, a deal that persisted after Prime Day). It’s small (4.3 x 3.1 x 0.55 inches) and from a trusted brand. I expect it to arrive within a day and I intend to transfer the contents of my old disk to it as soon as possible.
I almost didn’t buy it. After putting the drive in my cart, I thought twice and left it there all day. As I was working late on Prime Day, I was able to watch the entire event wrap up on the east coast of the US at midnight. Just before that, I got back into my cart and pulled the trigger.
Look at me, prime day big spender.
Should I have bought more? I know people who have bought laptops, components, clothing, and more. I bet everyone is feeling pretty good right now, and I’m feeling like a Prime Day shopping wimp.
Maybe next year.
