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Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1479
Price Guides September 2004: Optical and Magnetic Storage
by Adam Rader on September 19, 2004 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Introduction
Welcome back for the latest price guide. The last few weeks haven't shown much in the way of price changes for hard drives or DVD burners, except for the price dip every once in a while as retailers put something on sale and slap on a few dozen mail-in rebates.Be certain to visit our RealTime Pricing Engine for the latest prices and deltas before you go shopping.
DVD Burners
While hard drives aren't changing very much, DVD burners are showing quite the opposite. With the recent releases of numerous 16X-rated DVDR/RW drives comes the chance to burn your data at tolerable, if not pleasant, speeds.Offerings are already on the table and ready for purchase from manufacturers such as Pioneer, NEC, etc. The best part is that the prices for these new faster drives are almost the same as that of a fast CD burner a year or two ago. Media prices, additionally, are coming down in price and going up in quantity and quality, save for the still obvious availability shortages found in dual-layer media.
Hard Drives: Parallel ATA
Prices for hard drives are continuing to drop as manufacturers improve efficiency and platter density. Thanks to this, and the fact that RAID is quickly becoming the standard on enthusiast motherboards, there aren't many reasons left to avoid backing up your data to prevent the inevitable loss when something breaks. A RAID 1 array is very easy to set up and use these days, and the drives to make it happen are very low-cost as well. If the thought of having to back up your important data manually to a CD or DVD does not appeal to you, then the tried-and-true realm of HDDs may be the ticket.The cost-per-gigabyte for hard drives has been inching its way down for the last couple of years and is quickly approaching the 50 cents per gigabyte mark, even in retail. Even though the bulk of online retailers don't often show it, deals can be had that make hard drives seem like a commodity. It isn't rare anymore to see, for example, a 160GB Maxtor drive going for $70-$80 at brick-and-mortar stores like Best Buy, Office Max, and Fry's Electronics.
This week, it appears that Maxtor is leading the pack with the aforementioned drive. Maxtor's 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB drive has been a hot seller across many retailers and it shows by how low prices have become for this drive. Without sacrificing speed or access times, this drive can provide a hefty chunk of storage for your collection of music, videos, or digital photography.
Hard Drives: SATA
Serial ATA continues to push its way into the market and into desktops slowly, but surely. Most motherboards today come with onboard SATA controllers in addition to the standard PATA to make the transition easier. Many also support RAID on the SATA controller, making it just as viable as PATA, if not more future-minded.Prices do appear to be moving slightly upwards for SATA within the last few weeks, which is an odd change considering the simple reality that the only difference between SATA and PATA is the interface itself. All else inside the drive is identical to PATA.
Regardless, it's still worth considering SATA if you're looking to upgrade or build a new system. Only if you don't currently have an SATA capable motherboard would it really be necessary to hold off.
Hitachi has been doing well since their acquisition of IBM's HDD business and they have the prices to prove it. For under $100, you can snag a Hitachi SATA 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB drive, which is comparable to the cost of PATA without much bloat.
On the performance side, one cannot forget about Western Digital's Raptor drives. Extremely fast, these drives push data in and out quicker than any other ATA-based drive and complement a high-end system well. While still a bit pricey per gigabyte, they are still cheaper than most SCSI alternatives or the same performance level, and for that reason, they are worth considering when performance is more of a requirement than capacity.
Hard Drives: SCSI
Where would the world be without SCSI? The Internet would certainly be a slower place without it and it does have its place even as some options, such as the Western Digital Raptors, try to edge it out. Extremely fast seek times and optimized read/write patterns make these drives ideal for any system that will be handling massive I/O, such as database servers, high-volume websites, or corporate file servers. Pair these drives with a quality RAID controller, and the performance and reliability move upwards at speeds that would leave ATA in the dust... depending on application of course.SCSI is still more of a server architecture than a desktop or home-oriented one. For this reason, if all you want to do is play games, watch movies, and encode video or music, then SATA/PATA is still a much more cost-effective route. Otherwise, SCSI can offer many benefits, least of which is a longer warranty than what ATA drives tend to carry.
One drive that stands out this week as a great value is Hitachi's Ultra320 36.7GB 15,000RPM 8MB drive. At under $200, it pretty much embodies the spirit of performance and reliability that SCSI is so well-known for. If choosing SCSI, it's drives like this that make it worth it and will provide a noticeable increase in disk throughput when compared to ATA devices.