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Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1451
Price Guides End of August 2004: Optical and Magnetic Storage
by Adam Rader on August 27, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Introduction
It seems as if prices are on the rise across the entire PC technology board lately. Recent jumps in prices on CPUs, long-term upward trends in memory, and now, hard drives are following suit. DVD burners, fortunately, seem to be on a somewhat lower incline at least for the time being.Be certain to take a look at our RealTime Pricing Engine to see some of these trends for yourself and to find the absolute latest pricing information for optical and magnetic storage alike.
DVD Burners
Since our last guide covering the subject at hand, we have seen a few new DVD burners hit the market promising speeds of up to 16X. Regrettably, it seems that these drives suffer in a similar fashion as their Dual Layer counterparts in that media supporting speeds of up to 16X is difficult or impossible to find at most retailers. This, of course, will change rather quickly while it does not seem that dual layer media intends to make a hot pursuit. Dual layer discs, when found, tend to cost upwards of $12 for quality, brand-name blanks. That price is a bit difficult for most to swallow considering the ideal capacity is only 8.5 GB. To top that off, it's still too early to say whether or not DVD media suffers from the same gradual data loss that CD-R media has been proven to have in some cases. The market still has a bit of work ahead to bring media up to spec and prove itself to be a reliable and cost-effective data transfer and backup solution, specifically in the dual layer area.However, don't let the stiff words of 16X and Dual layer media turn you off from buying a good 16X drive. In fact, the two best drives we have seen at the AnandTech labs are the NEC 3500A and the Pioneer DVR-108D. Our Pioneer review will show up tommorow and, as a bit of a teaser, it completely dominates the PX-712A in burn speeds and write quality. The Pioneer definitely gets our recommendation for this week's Optical Storage Price Guide.
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.
Hard Drives: SATA
SATA connections/controllers are being included on more and more motherboards and OEM systems lately, and this trend is only going to continue in the future. With SATA drive prices often identical to the same type of drive utilizing PATA, there's no real reason to shy away from this new interface.Samsung's 160GB 7200RPM 8MB SATA drive wins the price wars this week at under $100, pushing aside the likes of Seagate and Maxtor. In this case, it is worth noting that as an OEM offering, this drive does not include the necessary SATA data cable. Keep this in mind if your motherboard or system did not come bundled with any cables. It's also important not to forget that many, if not most, onboard SATA controllers require drivers for Windows to recognize any connected drives. As SATA becomes more prevalent, this detail will eventually go away, but for now, it's here and quite likely the cause of one too many RMAs.
Hard Drives: SCSI
As always, we recognize that some users prefer SCSI for reasons such as performance, warranties, or even because of the cabling structure that it uses. Unfortunately, SCSI prices are still living up to the stereotype that they are much more costly when compared to ATA solutions. Even so, many will have good reason for choosing SCSI and in such cases, it's not rare for price to be the ultimate deciding factor in which SCSI drive to purchase.Fujitsu, this week, is leading the pack for entry-level SCSI drives with their Ultra320 36.7GB 10,000RPM 8MB drive. This drive manages to perform with 4.5ms average seek times and also has a fluid dynamic bearing to help keep things quiet. Fujitsu also has a drive with the same capacity, but with a spindle speed of 15,000RPMs and 3.3ms seek times, available this week for roughly double the price of its slower sibling.
For higher capacity, Maxtor's Ultra320 73GB 10,000RPM drive gives 4.3ms seek times and does so for only about $40 more than a Western Digital Raptor (SATA).