SCSI and SAS
Moving right along, we'll quickly take a look at the SCSI drives we have available floating around the marketplace. There are so many drives being offered in this line-up, so we must admit that looking through the chart may seem a little overwhelming. Make sure you get a drive that meets your requirements. What do we mean here? Well, our main concern is you pick up a drive(s) that will work with your setup because as you will notice, there are drives with a 68-pin interface along with drives using an 80-pin interface. You also have the option of going with a 10,000 or 15,000RPM hard drive. Speaking of RPMs, the 15K RPM drives are rather loud, not to mention expensive, so most people would much rather stick with slower SATA drives in desktop systems. You will also find quite a few manufacturers here, but the majority of the market is composed of drives from Maxtor and Seagate.
Taking a very quick look, the most reasonable price/capacity Ultra 320 drive we are able to locate this weekend is the Hitachi Ultra320 300GB 10000RPM 8MB Ultrastar 10K300 [RTPE: HUS103030FL3800] which is on sale for about $540 shipped (that's $1.80/GB). The best price/capacity 15,000RPM drive we're able to find this time around is the Maxtor Ultra320 36.7GB 15000RPM 8MB Atlas 15K II 80-pin [RTPE: 8E036J0] going for $175 shipped ($4.71/GB). 15K SCSI drives are used almost exclusively in the enterprise sector, which of course accounts for the extremely high prices. If you're looking for the highest capacity 15K drive possible, there are quite a few 146/147GB models available, starting at about $800 and going up to over $1000. However, unlike the 10K market, there are no 300GB 15K SCSI drives available yet.
There are also SAS drives available for the enterprise market, but do expect to pay a slightly higher premium than you would for the Ultra 320 drives. While previously only Maxtor and Seagate were producing SAS drives, Hitachi has recently joined them with three offerings. Both the Maxtor and Hitachi drives have 16MB of cache, while Seagate's offerings only have an 8MB cache. This isn't a huge concern, but it still warrants mention.
The drive with the most bang for the buck within the 10,000RPM category is the Maxtor SAS 73.5GB 10000RPM 16MB Atlas 10K V SAS [RTPE: 8J073S0] going for $200 ($2.76/GB). Within the 15,000RPM drives, the best price/capacity we're able to find is the Maxtor SAS 147GB 15000RPM 16MB Atlas 15K II SAS [RTPE: 8E147S0] on sale for about $890 ($5.80/GB). For raw capacity, only Maxtor is currently selling 300GB SAS drives, with the Maxtor SAS 300GB 10000RPM 16MB Atlas 10K V SAS [RTPE: 8J300S0] going for about $850 ($2.84/GB).
Moving right along, we'll quickly take a look at the SCSI drives we have available floating around the marketplace. There are so many drives being offered in this line-up, so we must admit that looking through the chart may seem a little overwhelming. Make sure you get a drive that meets your requirements. What do we mean here? Well, our main concern is you pick up a drive(s) that will work with your setup because as you will notice, there are drives with a 68-pin interface along with drives using an 80-pin interface. You also have the option of going with a 10,000 or 15,000RPM hard drive. Speaking of RPMs, the 15K RPM drives are rather loud, not to mention expensive, so most people would much rather stick with slower SATA drives in desktop systems. You will also find quite a few manufacturers here, but the majority of the market is composed of drives from Maxtor and Seagate.
The drive with the most bang for the buck within the 10,000RPM category is the Maxtor SAS 73.5GB 10000RPM 16MB Atlas 10K V SAS [RTPE: 8J073S0] going for $200 ($2.76/GB). Within the 15,000RPM drives, the best price/capacity we're able to find is the Maxtor SAS 147GB 15000RPM 16MB Atlas 15K II SAS [RTPE: 8E147S0] on sale for about $890 ($5.80/GB). For raw capacity, only Maxtor is currently selling 300GB SAS drives, with the Maxtor SAS 300GB 10000RPM 16MB Atlas 10K V SAS [RTPE: 8J300S0] going for about $850 ($2.84/GB).
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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.!