SCSI and SAS
Moving right along, we'll quickly take a look at the SCSI drives we have available floating around the marketplace. There are so many drives being offered in this line-up, so we must admit that looking through the chart may seem a little overwhelming. Make sure you get a drive that meets your requirements. What do we mean here? Well, our main concern is you pick up a drive(s) that will work with your setup because as you will notice, there are drives with a 68-pin interface along with drives using an 80-pin interface. You also have the option of going with a 10,000 or 15,000RPM hard drive. Speaking of RPMs, the 15K RPM drives are rather loud, not to mention expensive, so most people would much rather stick with slower SATA drives in desktop systems. You will also find quite a few manufacturers here, but the majority of the market is composed of drives from Maxtor and Seagate.
Taking a very quick look, the most reasonable price/capacity Ultra 320 drive we are able to locate this weekend is the Hitachi Ultra320 300GB 10000RPM 8MB Ultrastar 10K300 [RTPE: HUS103030FL3800] which is on sale for about $540 shipped (that's $1.80/GB). The best price/capacity 15,000RPM drive we're able to find this time around is the Maxtor Ultra320 36.7GB 15000RPM 8MB Atlas 15K II 80-pin [RTPE: 8E036J0] going for $175 shipped ($4.71/GB). 15K SCSI drives are used almost exclusively in the enterprise sector, which of course accounts for the extremely high prices. If you're looking for the highest capacity 15K drive possible, there are quite a few 146/147GB models available, starting at about $800 and going up to over $1000. However, unlike the 10K market, there are no 300GB 15K SCSI drives available yet.
There are also SAS drives available for the enterprise market, but do expect to pay a slightly higher premium than you would for the Ultra 320 drives. While previously only Maxtor and Seagate were producing SAS drives, Hitachi has recently joined them with three offerings. Both the Maxtor and Hitachi drives have 16MB of cache, while Seagate's offerings only have an 8MB cache. This isn't a huge concern, but it still warrants mention.
The drive with the most bang for the buck within the 10,000RPM category is the Maxtor SAS 73.5GB 10000RPM 16MB Atlas 10K V SAS [RTPE: 8J073S0] going for $200 ($2.76/GB). Within the 15,000RPM drives, the best price/capacity we're able to find is the Maxtor SAS 147GB 15000RPM 16MB Atlas 15K II SAS [RTPE: 8E147S0] on sale for about $890 ($5.80/GB). For raw capacity, only Maxtor is currently selling 300GB SAS drives, with the Maxtor SAS 300GB 10000RPM 16MB Atlas 10K V SAS [RTPE: 8J300S0] going for about $850 ($2.84/GB).
Moving right along, we'll quickly take a look at the SCSI drives we have available floating around the marketplace. There are so many drives being offered in this line-up, so we must admit that looking through the chart may seem a little overwhelming. Make sure you get a drive that meets your requirements. What do we mean here? Well, our main concern is you pick up a drive(s) that will work with your setup because as you will notice, there are drives with a 68-pin interface along with drives using an 80-pin interface. You also have the option of going with a 10,000 or 15,000RPM hard drive. Speaking of RPMs, the 15K RPM drives are rather loud, not to mention expensive, so most people would much rather stick with slower SATA drives in desktop systems. You will also find quite a few manufacturers here, but the majority of the market is composed of drives from Maxtor and Seagate.
The drive with the most bang for the buck within the 10,000RPM category is the Maxtor SAS 73.5GB 10000RPM 16MB Atlas 10K V SAS [RTPE: 8J073S0] going for $200 ($2.76/GB). Within the 15,000RPM drives, the best price/capacity we're able to find is the Maxtor SAS 147GB 15000RPM 16MB Atlas 15K II SAS [RTPE: 8E147S0] on sale for about $890 ($5.80/GB). For raw capacity, only Maxtor is currently selling 300GB SAS drives, with the Maxtor SAS 300GB 10000RPM 16MB Atlas 10K V SAS [RTPE: 8J300S0] going for about $850 ($2.84/GB).
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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