PATA
Moving right along, here you'll see the many PATA drives that are available. Looking at the cost per GB, these drives are right up there with the SATA drives these days. As most motherboards currently support SATA drives, we suggest that you go with a SATA drive. However, if you are running an older motherboard or one without the option of the SATA interface, a PATA drive is going to be your only option.
Just as with the SATA drives, you have the option of also going with up to 500GB capacity drives. There are also many that are still being produced with only 2MB of cache. We recommend that you go with at least 8MB of cache, if not 16MB. It can only benefit you, as the price of a drive with 16MB of cache isn't much higher than a drive with only 8 or 2MBs.
We aren't seeing much fluctuation in the prices this time around. Really, the only significant adjustments are within the 400GB category. The most that we are seeing there is about a $30 decrease, which nonetheless is still worthwhile. Throughout all the other PATA sizes, the pricing fluctuations are trivial.
We have broken down the pricing tables here as there are so many drives and this will allow you to easily and quickly find the specific hard drive capacity that you are looking for. If you're interested in drives smaller than 120GB, you can search the price engine manually. Given the price difference between 80 and 120 GB drives, there's really not much point in purchasing the former. If you don't mind mail-in rebates, TigerDirect has a couple of really nice offers: $58 shipped for either the Seagate 160GB 7200.9 or the Maxtor 160GB DiamondMax 10 ($.36/GB).
Moving right along, here you'll see the many PATA drives that are available. Looking at the cost per GB, these drives are right up there with the SATA drives these days. As most motherboards currently support SATA drives, we suggest that you go with a SATA drive. However, if you are running an older motherboard or one without the option of the SATA interface, a PATA drive is going to be your only option.
Just as with the SATA drives, you have the option of also going with up to 500GB capacity drives. There are also many that are still being produced with only 2MB of cache. We recommend that you go with at least 8MB of cache, if not 16MB. It can only benefit you, as the price of a drive with 16MB of cache isn't much higher than a drive with only 8 or 2MBs.
We aren't seeing much fluctuation in the prices this time around. Really, the only significant adjustments are within the 400GB category. The most that we are seeing there is about a $30 decrease, which nonetheless is still worthwhile. Throughout all the other PATA sizes, the pricing fluctuations are trivial.
We have broken down the pricing tables here as there are so many drives and this will allow you to easily and quickly find the specific hard drive capacity that you are looking for. If you're interested in drives smaller than 120GB, you can search the price engine manually. Given the price difference between 80 and 120 GB drives, there's really not much point in purchasing the former. If you don't mind mail-in rebates, TigerDirect has a couple of really nice offers: $58 shipped for either the Seagate 160GB 7200.9 or the Maxtor 160GB DiamondMax 10 ($.36/GB).
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AznBoi36 - Sunday, March 19, 2006 - link
I think it would be a good idea if the drives shown include NCQ/RoHS since there are both the same models that have/doesn't have these features.Like for example; there are models of the 7200.8 that feature NCQ and then there are models that do not have NCQ.
Just to clarify a point...
Zoomer - Wednesday, March 22, 2006 - link
NCQ may be useful to some, but RoHS? Who really cares about that?jamori - Monday, March 13, 2006 - link
While I understand that most of the anandtech staff doesn't like to deal with rebates, there are those of us who are willing to in order to get the best deal on a product.Under the old RTPE, cost/GB would be calculated with before-rebate prices, and I recall that even when sorting by price in the 'rebate' section, the before rebate price would be used to sort. It seems that the new 'rebates' sections don't have any sorting options, but in the storage section, the cost/GB for products with rebates doesn't make any sense.
For example, in the SATA drive rebate section, the drive at the top is a 250GB Maxtor drive from TigerDirect for $119.99 - $30 MIR, with (it looks like) $8.36 in tax/shipping/whatever for me. The price displayed is $88.37 after MIR, and it says $.39/GB.
This doesn't make any sense, though. $88.37/250 = $0.3535 / GB
Ok, so are you using the before-rebate price? Let's try $128.37 -> $0.5135 / GB. Definitely not.
$119.99 -> 0.47996 / GB. Nope
The only thing I can find that's anywhere close is if you take the average of the retail price and the after-rebate price, ignoring shipping, to get
(119.99 + 79.99) / (2*250) -> $0.39996 / GB, which (if that's how you're doing it), should be rounded up to $0.40 / GB anyway.
How in the world are you calculating cost/GB??
JarredWalton - Monday, March 13, 2006 - link
You'll have to ask our RTPE people, who are separate from the editorial staff. I'll forward this question to Lawrence to see if he can respond (or fix the issue).JarredWalton - Monday, March 13, 2006 - link
Actually, looking at http://labs.anandtech.com/search.php?q=sata%20stor...">this page, I'm not sure which price/drive you're talking about. The P/GB results seem to take the rebates into account, plus shipping. If there's an issue with any of the values listed, send me a direct link, would you? Right now, just giving it a quick once-over, everything looks right.rrcn - Monday, March 13, 2006 - link
Simple.I base my cost/GB prices on what the RTPE lists it as.
I don't know which Maxtor you were using in your example, but I will give you an example of my own.
The 250GB Maxtor [RTPE: http://labs.anandtech.com/alllinks.php?pfilter=267...">6L250SO] which can be found listed on the SATA 1.5Gbps is retailing for $99.99 shipped.
Now if you click http://labs.anandtech.com/products.php?sfilter=110">here and scroll down to the third drive from the end, you will see the 6L250SO. You'll see that it's priced at $0.40/GB which is what is stated in the guide on page 3. That's the price of the hard drive plus shipping that gives you $0.40/GB.
$99.99 (including shipping cost)/250GB = $0.39996 = $0.40/GB.
I base my prices on exactly what the RTPE states. And the price listed in the RTPE is only the cost of the drive plus shipping, taxes are omitted from the prices listed as that varies from state to state.
PrinceGaz - Monday, March 13, 2006 - link
"Moving right along, here you'll see the many PATA drives that are available. Looking at the cost per GB, these drives are right up there with the SATA drives these days. As most motherboards currently support SATA drives, we suggest that you go with a SATA drive. However, if you are running an older motherboard or one without the option of the SATA interface, a PATA drive is going to be your only option."A PATA drive is not your only option. It might be worth buying a cheap SATA PCI card so that you can use a SATA drive instead. That has the advantage that when you upgrade you can use the SATA drive in your new system.
SLIM - Monday, March 13, 2006 - link
Can anybody explain why nobody seems to want to build sata optical drives??? Plextor is the only one I know of that ships one sata drive. Is it that much more expensive to use a sata interface? It would be nice to finally get rid of parallel cables (even rounded ones).JarredWalton - Monday, March 13, 2006 - link
The Plextor SATA drive apparently has issues, so it could be that other companies have looked into SATA optical drives and are holding off for now.Lamdon - Sunday, March 12, 2006 - link
I am sorta dissapointed there were no mobile drives posted. I am presently looking for a 2.5" hard drive for my laptop.