Price Guides End of August 2004: Optical and Magnetic Storage
by Adam Rader on August 27, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Hard Drives: Parallel ATA
With hard drive storage prices at a standstill, and in many cases, moving upwards ever so slightly, it's nice to see some models staying at reasonable prices at a few retailers. For under $100 shipped, Maxtor's 160GB 7200RPM 8MB drive promises the best price to performance ratio for its size. The FDB motor also helps to keep your system quiet, which is very useful if you intend to place the system in your bedroom or integrate it into a home theater PC. For about $20 more, you can upgrade to a 200GB drive from Maxtor (same specifications as above, save for capacity). Seagate also becomes a bit more competitive at this drive size with their own 200GB 7200RPM drive available for around $115 shipped, slightly edging out Maxtor.No matter what drive choice you make, however, now is certainly a good time to buy. Prices appear to have reached their current lows and there isn't anything new and groundbreaking in the near future that would push prices much lower. With motherboards sporting onboard RAID controllers, this is especially good, since one can set up a mirrored array and finally make good in the area of backups without having to think about it, change tapes, or spend hours or days burning backups to CD or DVD.
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PrinceGaz - Saturday, August 28, 2004 - link
@sprockkets: unless your Maxtor drives are really ancient and use a stepper-motor to move the heads, you have no need to worry about them. All drives these days automatically move the heads by default to a safe place simply by removing the power.I'd personally be more concerned about the fact that you treat HDs in a way where that causes them to make any noise while handling them. Handle them like eggs once out the protective foam and you'll have a lot less failures.
sprockkets - Saturday, August 28, 2004 - link
The only thing about those Maxtor drives that worry me is the fact I was moving it around to another computer and I could hear the drive heads scratching the surface of the platters. Why IBM/Hitachi is the only HDD maker who have the heads move completely off the platter when off is beyond me.Reflex - Saturday, August 28, 2004 - link
Outpost.com has a 250GB Maxtor drive for $119.http://shop4.outpost.com/product/3700356
Got one for myself, its a heck of a deal and man is that drive nice...
SpamMagnet - Friday, August 27, 2004 - link
Nice to know I wasn't as confused as I thought I was... ;-)Looking forward to the Pioneer DVR-108D review!
AdamRader - Friday, August 27, 2004 - link
Sorry folks for the mixup. This guide was actually supposed to come out tomorrow with two totally different drives. (The part of both drives being dual layer was also a brain lapse on my part.) This should be resolved shortly.SpamMagnet - Friday, August 27, 2004 - link
The section on DVD burners mentions the NEC ND-2510A and Plextor PX-712A, then goes on to say "both drives here are ready to go out of the box for dual layer burning".I don't know about NEC, but I'm pretty sure the Plextor won't even read DVD+R9 much less write to it.
Shalmanese - Friday, August 27, 2004 - link
Any chance of including a $/gig coloumn for the Hard Drives? Would make comparing different sized drives a bit easier.JarredWalton - Friday, August 27, 2004 - link
SCSI drives... do enthusiasts still buy those? Anyway, the prices on the Maxtor and Seagate 10000RPM 73 GB drives seem to have swapped places, making the Seagate the better buy at $220. Too bad SCSI controllers and cables still add substantially to the cost, as I would wager the 10000 RPM 73 GB SCSI drives offer slightly better performance and scalability than the Raptor 74 GB.Degrador - Friday, August 27, 2004 - link
The Pioneer DVR-108 just got released, and is a wonderful 16X dual layer burner at a pretty good price, yet isn't on your pricing engine... I'd be recommending that above the others...