Price Guides May 2004: Optical and Magnetic Storage
by Kristopher Kubicki on May 2, 2004 7:18 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
PATA Hard Drives
Since the capacity from Raptors can be a little less than fulfilling for those with massive collections of files or those just working with extremely large files, PATA is still the cost effective way to go for mass storage. For this reason a 160GB drive from Maxtor comes to mind. Specifically the Maxtor ATA133 160GB 7200RPM 8MB drive. At a little over 60 cents per gigabyte this becomes much more affordable to the average user who values space over speed. That doesn't mean that this drive slacks either. The 7200 RPM spindle and 8MB cache help keep data flowing quite readily. The same spec drive from Western Digital also appears for about the same price as the Maxtor, with Seagate following close behind. All of these drives will fit into or near the $100 price point without sacrificing transfer rates and slowing you down.
Since it's not always wise to put too many eggs in one basket and load up all of your precious data onto a single hard drive, even with the increased reliability that manufacturers have developed over the years it may not be too attractive to run out and purchase a 250-300+ gig drive. Of course if you are short on open bays in your case and need a lot of space we recommend Maxtor for their 300 gig drive. At only 5400 RPMs and only 2MB cache it certainly isn't going to set any speed records but it will store a lot of data without breaking the bank completely. This size drive is also very well suited for external enclosures such as those used for external backups or transferring large files between home, work, or a friend's computer. Remember, if you're just using a drive for extra storage and not particularly for your system drive, low RPM and low cache do not really hurt performance.
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operator - Monday, May 10, 2004 - link
[quote] Do you mind playing a 1 in 10 chance of loosing your data for single digit percentage performance increases? [/quote]Sounds like someone doens't know the difference between losing and loosing.
Zak - Sunday, May 9, 2004 - link
Quote:"Concerning RAID: often we are asked if it is worth it to buy two 36.7GB drives and RAID them together for performance. Our answer is no; the performance increases are minute, but your stability issues are horrible"
Hmm... I run 2 Hitachi SATA drives in a RAID-0 on a K8V Deluze mobo and I'm getting reads and writes in excess of 100MB/s, games and apps launch noticeably faster, not exactly a "minute" increase. PATA RAID-0 was not that much faster but SATA RAID-0 nearly doubles the speed like SCSI does as far as I can tell. Agreed though that the chances of loosing data is higher, but this is my gaming/audio/video machine and I don't keep valuable data on it.
SocrPlyr - Wednesday, May 5, 2004 - link
i forgot to mention about the unsecure data cable... i don't know about your uses but the ones i have used have snapped in very very tightly, maybe it was just the cables that i was using but i actually had problems removing them...Josh
SocrPlyr - Wednesday, May 5, 2004 - link
quantai would have to say the make good points but most of those things hold true for PATA as well... so they aren't anything new...
Josh
quanta - Tuesday, May 4, 2004 - link
It seems everyone overlooks the potential problem with current generation of SATA drives, which is highlighted at http://ata-atapi.com/sata.htm . BTW, Hale Landis works on the ATA/ATAPI standards, so I have confident with his info. Other than that, the connector is not really secure, which can lead to data loss, is not fixed until SATA-2, and only on external SATA units.mechBgon - Tuesday, May 4, 2004 - link
Kristopher, I really am just pulling your leg about the SCSI stuff :) I know no one wants to hear about SCSI due to the high cost-to-capacity ratio. To each his own...Slingman - Monday, May 3, 2004 - link
Kristopher,I can't seem to get solid info on this anywhere, and your article really caught my eye since I was hoping to get an answer to this question. There are many of us that were holding out for the "new" 36 GB raptors based on the same mechanics as the 74 GB version, with the fluid bearing motors and all.
Is there any word on whether or not these drives have actually hit the retail channel yet and if they have, where to buy them? Conversely, if they haven't, when are they expected to? A couple of months ago I had read that they would be shipping in April, but April has come and gone without a formal announcement. Thanks for the writeup.
AtaStrumf - Monday, May 3, 2004 - link
Well in EU I pay more like $1,75 per disc, and if I want to get some quality It costs me $2,50/disc. And yes that is US dollars!So I think you all should just thank your lucky stars!
Jeff7181 - Monday, May 3, 2004 - link
Sorry for being anal... but since when is "RAID" a verb? =)KristopherKubicki - Monday, May 3, 2004 - link
True Absolut, but if you go to best buy you can find them for even cheaper after rebate.Kristopher