PATA
Carrying on, we'll now take a look at the older PATA drives. As this is one of the oldest interfaces around today, you will notice that many drives still being sold today have 2MB of cache. We suggest you go with a drive that has at least an 8MB cache if not 16MB. There really isn't much of a price difference between the 8 and 16MB cache drives, so we highly suggest going with a drive which has a 16MB cache as there is no harm.
While many of the pricing fluctuations are trivial in the smaller sized drives, you will see the most significant price adjustments within the 400 and 500GB drives. The largest decrease we're seeing within the 400GB category is about $25, while in the 500GB category, the largest decrease is about $70. Within the 400GB category, the best priced drive we're seeing is the Seagate ATA100 400GB 7200RPM 8MB Barracuda 7200.8 [RTPE: ST3400832A] going for about $180 shipped ($0.44/GB). While we're seeing the most reasonably priced 400GB drive from Seagate, known for their generally quiet operation, within the 500GB category, the best price we can find is for the Hitachi ATA100 500GB 7200RPM 8MB Deskstar 7K500 [RTPE: HDS725050KLAT80] which is going for approximately $245 shipped ($0.49/GB).
There are so many PATA drives in the market of all sizes and flavors, so we've taken the time right now to divide up the drives by sizes. We have omitted the 40 and 80GB drives from our charts, and have listed from the 120GB, through the 250 and the 320GB drives. We'll skip the exhaustive list here, as it really becomes too large to be reasonably digested.
We're only pulling up on a single drive featuring a mail-in rebate, but we're able to find many other drives at much better price points. For example, we're seeing the Western Digital ATA100 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Caviar SE [RTPE: WD2500JB] on sale for about $82 shipped ($0.33/GB). Another excellent deal can be had on the Seagate ATA100 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Barracuda 7200.9 [RTPE: ST3250824A] which is going for approximately $90 ($0.36/GB).
Carrying on, we'll now take a look at the older PATA drives. As this is one of the oldest interfaces around today, you will notice that many drives still being sold today have 2MB of cache. We suggest you go with a drive that has at least an 8MB cache if not 16MB. There really isn't much of a price difference between the 8 and 16MB cache drives, so we highly suggest going with a drive which has a 16MB cache as there is no harm.
There are so many PATA drives in the market of all sizes and flavors, so we've taken the time right now to divide up the drives by sizes. We have omitted the 40 and 80GB drives from our charts, and have listed from the 120GB, through the 250 and the 320GB drives. We'll skip the exhaustive list here, as it really becomes too large to be reasonably digested.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
20 Comments
View All Comments
peternelson - Sunday, June 11, 2006 - link
Why not track the latest Pioneer 111 dvd writer rather than the 110 model?
rrcn - Sunday, June 11, 2006 - link
Thanks for the heads up. I have talked to our RTPE administrator and he has gone ahead and added it to the engine. :-)JarredWalton - Sunday, June 11, 2006 - link
I've sent an email to our RTPE guy to get it added - I'm not sure how long it's been available, but there's only so much information any one person can keep current on. :)Pollock - Sunday, June 11, 2006 - link
The $10 rebate for the WD2500KS expired yesterday, so it's only $90 shipped from Newegg now.JarredWalton - Sunday, June 11, 2006 - link
Unfortunately, that's the problem with pricing information. The day we post an article, prices already start to change. That's why we include the price tables, which update automatically, as well as links to product pages in the RTPE.JarredWalton - Sunday, June 11, 2006 - link
I've updated the text to include reference to the 111D in place of the 110D.CrystalBay - Sunday, June 11, 2006 - link
They differ in Price DUH..Offa dufaOlaf van der Spek - Sunday, June 11, 2006 - link
Why are 1.5 and 3 gbit/s drives listed separately when they don't differ performance wise?JarredWalton - Sunday, June 11, 2006 - link
Actually, I've debated combining them (and suggesting that to Haider), but the only way to make a sensible SATA page that way involves not listing all SATA hard drives - the bottom charts on pages 2 and 3 are already too long. As mentioned below, prices also differ (sometimes), and there may be a few SATA controllers out there that have issues with the backwards compatibility of 3.0Gbps models. (I've never encountered any, but there *might* be.)rrcn - Sunday, June 11, 2006 - link
Exactly. The pricing tables are already at great length and dividing them up by their specific SATA interface seems most logical. This just makes it easier to sift through them. As you can also see, Jarred has gone ahead and divided up the 3.0 and 1.5Gbps charts even further by hard drive sizes.--Haider