PATA
Carrying on, we'll now take a look at the older PATA drives. As this is one of the oldest interfaces around today, you will notice that many drives still being sold today have 2MB of cache. We suggest you go with a drive that has at least an 8MB cache if not 16MB. There really isn't much of a price difference between the 8 and 16MB cache drives, so we highly suggest going with a drive which has a 16MB cache as there is no harm.
While many of the pricing fluctuations are trivial in the smaller sized drives, you will see the most significant price adjustments within the 400 and 500GB drives. The largest decrease we're seeing within the 400GB category is about $25, while in the 500GB category, the largest decrease is about $70. Within the 400GB category, the best priced drive we're seeing is the Seagate ATA100 400GB 7200RPM 8MB Barracuda 7200.8 [RTPE: ST3400832A] going for about $180 shipped ($0.44/GB). While we're seeing the most reasonably priced 400GB drive from Seagate, known for their generally quiet operation, within the 500GB category, the best price we can find is for the Hitachi ATA100 500GB 7200RPM 8MB Deskstar 7K500 [RTPE: HDS725050KLAT80] which is going for approximately $245 shipped ($0.49/GB).
There are so many PATA drives in the market of all sizes and flavors, so we've taken the time right now to divide up the drives by sizes. We have omitted the 40 and 80GB drives from our charts, and have listed from the 120GB, through the 250 and the 320GB drives. We'll skip the exhaustive list here, as it really becomes too large to be reasonably digested.
We're only pulling up on a single drive featuring a mail-in rebate, but we're able to find many other drives at much better price points. For example, we're seeing the Western Digital ATA100 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Caviar SE [RTPE: WD2500JB] on sale for about $82 shipped ($0.33/GB). Another excellent deal can be had on the Seagate ATA100 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Barracuda 7200.9 [RTPE: ST3250824A] which is going for approximately $90 ($0.36/GB).
Carrying on, we'll now take a look at the older PATA drives. As this is one of the oldest interfaces around today, you will notice that many drives still being sold today have 2MB of cache. We suggest you go with a drive that has at least an 8MB cache if not 16MB. There really isn't much of a price difference between the 8 and 16MB cache drives, so we highly suggest going with a drive which has a 16MB cache as there is no harm.
There are so many PATA drives in the market of all sizes and flavors, so we've taken the time right now to divide up the drives by sizes. We have omitted the 40 and 80GB drives from our charts, and have listed from the 120GB, through the 250 and the 320GB drives. We'll skip the exhaustive list here, as it really becomes too large to be reasonably digested.
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PrinceGaz - Tuesday, June 13, 2006 - link
I know not many of them are available yet, but I trust you will be adding them to future month's storage price articles.It might be worth including HD-DVD and BD readers as well until the burners come down to a reasonable price.
SignalPST - Monday, June 12, 2006 - link
Can SAS hard drives be used on onboard SATA2.0 ports such as the nForce4 motherboards?Or do SAS drives require a SAS PCI-E cards?
King Mongo - Monday, June 12, 2006 - link
I think the real deal for all large-size PATA and SATA drives is to be found at Outpost.com. They have consistently offered 500GB PATA & SATA drives for less than $200, with free shipping, for the past two weeks. NO REBATES. I believe the new standard for 500GB is $189For Seagate retail, Outpost.com *cannot* be beat.
For Maxtor & Western Digital, however, I would stay with the OEM resellers (like ZZF, eWiz, etc) because Maxtor & WD OEM drives come with a more robust warranty than the retail (for some reason).
SnoMunke - Monday, June 12, 2006 - link
First, you are missing the WD 5000YS (500GB) RE2 drive...Second, "While previously only Maxtor and Seagate were producing SAS drives, Hitachi has recently joined them with three offerings." is simply a B.S. statement. Hitachi SAS drives have been out for over 6 months!!! (I know because I bought one back in January and I b!tched at you before when you left the Hitachi SAS drives off Storage Price Guide!)
Third, you really need to clean up the presentation of your Storage Price Guide...it is simply not easy to read. How about dividing it up first by interface (which you have done) and then by HDD size (large, medium, small)? As others pointed out, SATA 1.5/3.0 HDDs should be lumped together.
Fourth, not to leave you too chastised from my harsh comments, I read Anandtech/DailyTech on a HOURLY basis. You all are doing a great job!
dhei - Sunday, June 11, 2006 - link
Like I have a mobo that supports 1.5sata, can i buy a 3.0 to "future proof" when i upgrade? Its the little things like that i always forget..hehJarredWalton - Sunday, June 11, 2006 - link
Yes, that's what we tried to explain on pages 2 and 3. There may be some exceptions out there on mobos, but if so I have yet to encounter them. (Note that I haven't tested any VIA/SiS chipset offerings in a long time, so I can't say for sure that they work. The spec is *supposed* to be backwards compatible, however.)regpfj - Sunday, June 11, 2006 - link
I gave up reading after the second page.
arswihart - Sunday, June 11, 2006 - link
Anandtech, what are you talking about in this whole article, its an outdated, and not-useful pile of rubbish if you ask me.JarredWalton - Sunday, June 11, 2006 - link
We're talking about hard drives. Outdated in what way? Not useful in what way? Specifics are helpful, and I find it hard to believe that two minor typos would turn this into rubbish. Do you simply not want us to do storage guides, or can you try to help by offering some suggestions for improvement? Simply posting flames on the internet does no one any good.If you're complaining about price differences (i.e. text doesn't coincide with the real-time charts), these prices change on a daily basis. If the text does not exactly reflect current prices 24 hours after being written, there's not much we can do to fix that.
Dfere - Monday, June 12, 2006 - link
Get Em, Jarred.Speaking for myself, I do not take this type of post seriously, and most of us do not... but fight the good fight, boy.!