Price Guides, October 2005: Storage
by Jarred Walton & Haider Farhan on October 15, 2005 6:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
DVDR
We'll conclude with some coverage of the optical drives. DVDRs have become extremely cheap now and are one of the best ways to back up your data. The NEC ND-3540A [RTPE: ND-3540A] continues to top the price charts, going for just under $39.00 shipped. You can also see that this DVDR is being sold at the lowest price that we've yet seen, although week-to-week and even day-to-day fluctuations can be $5 or more.
Besides the BenQ and NEC drives, Pioneer, LG, Toshiba, and Lite-On all have competing products, but features and performance are so close that there's little reason to spend even $5 more. The only drive that stands out from the list with something extra is the LG [RTPE: LGA-4163B], as it supports 5X DVD-RAM. We don't use it, but some of you might need the feature. Plextor is often regarded as the king of optical drives, and they have a price to match. The PX-740A [RTPE: PX-740A] is really just a rebadged BenQ DW1540, but at a $35 premium. The PX-716A [RTPE: PX-716A], on the other hand, costs nearly three times as much as the NEC, so unless you have overwhelming brand loyalty to Plextor, you should save your money.
We'll conclude with some coverage of the optical drives. DVDRs have become extremely cheap now and are one of the best ways to back up your data. The NEC ND-3540A [RTPE: ND-3540A] continues to top the price charts, going for just under $39.00 shipped. You can also see that this DVDR is being sold at the lowest price that we've yet seen, although week-to-week and even day-to-day fluctuations can be $5 or more.
NEC 16X ND-3540A
Besides the BenQ and NEC drives, Pioneer, LG, Toshiba, and Lite-On all have competing products, but features and performance are so close that there's little reason to spend even $5 more. The only drive that stands out from the list with something extra is the LG [RTPE: LGA-4163B], as it supports 5X DVD-RAM. We don't use it, but some of you might need the feature. Plextor is often regarded as the king of optical drives, and they have a price to match. The PX-740A [RTPE: PX-740A] is really just a rebadged BenQ DW1540, but at a $35 premium. The PX-716A [RTPE: PX-716A], on the other hand, costs nearly three times as much as the NEC, so unless you have overwhelming brand loyalty to Plextor, you should save your money.
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Doormat - Monday, October 17, 2005 - link
Only 120GB, 160GB and 500GB sizes available? Hopefully the rest follow shortly.. I'd like to get two of the 300 or 400GB drives.ProviaFan - Saturday, October 15, 2005 - link
I'm intrigued by the idea of SAS, but I'd really like to see a PCI-E SAS controller. Any idea when such a beast might appear?Lifted - Sunday, October 16, 2005 - link
Why would you need a standard SATA controller unless you are running a large RAID array? I don't even think there any motherboards out there that have PCI-E and lack SATA.photoguy99 - Sunday, October 16, 2005 - link
He asked about SAS, not SATA. Almost 0% of systems come with a built in SAS controller which is why he would want a PCI-E device.SAS could turn out to be very nice for gamers or people who want high performance.
Right now Raptor is pretty much the only high performance choice. SCSI drives are faster but (besides the price) have complications of needing a controller, termination, and other config issues that can make them a real pain.
SAS has the potential to let you just drop in a 15k drive no muss no fuss, and the controller still supports all SATA drives.
So the ideal configuration for a high perf machine might be:
1 SAS Controller
1 Small 36 or 72GB 15k drive (blows away a raptor)
1 300-500 SATA drive for storage
Much faster than a raptor system, easy to install and configure, and only $200-300 more in price (not huge for an enthusiast system).
Windows boots and game levels load *very* fast on a 15k drive.
Lifted - Sunday, October 16, 2005 - link
Ahh, my mistake.Regarding the 15k SCSI drive for Windows XP, it's deffinitely NOT faster for general use. I have a 73GB 15k Fujitsu in my workstation at work. With bootup and general tasks it is SLOWER than the Raptor I have at home. It would be a waste of money for a home user, especially since SAS is currently A LOT slower than standard SCSI drives. 15k drives are only useful when you have many concurrent I/O's, which homes users will not have unless they are running a file server for their whole neighborhood over a Gb backbone.
HP is trying to sell SAS on the new Proliants but I don't know anybody who has purchased them yet to get an idea of the pros/cons of using SAS in the real world. But again, since SAS is currently slower, why spend more for less?
ProviaFan - Monday, October 17, 2005 - link
That's interesting to hear. I'd been told before that SCSI drives tend to be more optimized in the firmware for server tasks than for workstations, but despite that I didn't really think that a 15kRPM SCSI drive would "feel" slower than a 10kRPM SATA. Although, I'm not sure that I see where you're getting the idea that SAS will be that much slower than SCSI; I'd like to see some proof (either logical or benchmark) of that.Largely, I was contemplating SCSI or SAS because I thought it would bring at least a slightly noticeable improvement in "snap" over my 1st-gen Raptor. I obviously don't posses the budget for a solid state drive right now, and without doing some insane RAID setup (which wouldn't help for access time, which is what I need anyway), I don't see how there's much room for improvement of the hard disk bottleneck in my current system. For what it's worth, I have 2GB of RAM and don't find that limiting, so going to 4GB probably wouldn't help (loading Photoshop the _second_ time is plenty fast enough, so I'm convinced that my Raptor is holding me back).
Xenoterranos - Sunday, October 16, 2005 - link
What's the failure rate of a 15K drive? and at 36GB, thats not gonna cut the mustard for my game drive. Right now, I'm at 42 gigs on just my games partition. True, about 15gb of that is Steam, but still, it takes 20+ gigs for Steam, Morrowind, KotOR, Galaxies, and Doom3 alone. I don't think even the 72 gig 15K drive would satisfy my needs, and I've never considered myself a massive gamer, games are just getting bigger.Xenoterranos - Sunday, October 16, 2005 - link
Wow, I didn't even realize Silent Hill 3 was 5 gigs?! But seriously, SATA is the way to go. There are so many limitations to IDE that it's a little rediculous. Raid is easier on sata, you dont have to worry about the whole master-slave relationship (my pet peve of pata) and the cables are already rounded! (ok, that was a cheap one)mongoosesRawesome - Saturday, October 15, 2005 - link
Is there really any benefit to going SATA?I'd say that if you are comfortable enough with PATA, pick one up at your local BB or CC. I recently picked up a seagate 160 GB hard drive for 20 dollars.
Xenoterranos - Sunday, October 16, 2005 - link
But when's the expected delivery date of your mail-in rebates? Oct 2009?