Introduction

Welcome to our latest rendition of our Price Guides. For this week, we’ll be taking a look at pricing trends and special buys for all your storage needs from SATA drives to PATA hard drives, down to your SCSI and DVDRs. As we do with just about every other edition of our weekly Price Guides, we would like to remind our readers to look into the RTPE at http://labs.anandtech.com for just about all their computer building needs. Not only does the RTPE cover the usual products that we like to cover in our Price Guides (the hard drives, CPUs, video cards and motherboards), but it also covers your sound card, system memory (both for laptops and desktops), flash memory, and LCD monitors. If you haven’t had the chance to check it out before, feel free to do so now!

Now we’ll head into more about what this edition of our Price Guide is about - hard drives. We are noticing that hard drives have come down a few cents per GB, roughly about $0.05 or so. We’re not saying that it’s much of a decrease, but every bit helps. The SATA 3.0Gbps and 1.5Gbps drives are about even, price-wise. Either of the two would be a fine choice, as the main difference between the two is their bandwidth capabilities, and at the moment, that’s a moot point if they are not set up in a RAID array as we saw in our look at Seagate’s 160GB 7200.9 a few weeks back.

Starting off this price guide, we’ll first take a look at the 3.0Gbps drives.

SATA – 3.0Gbps

Since our last analysis, we can see that the 3.0Gbps drives have slightly decreased in price. There are a number of good deals going on, so we’ll take the time right now to make a few recommendations. First off, we have the Samsung 3.0Gbps 250GB 7200RPM 8MB SpinPoint P [RTPE: SP2504C] on sale for approximately $102. As another option, you also have the Western Digital 3.0Gbps 250GB 7200RPM 16MB Caviar SE16 [RTPE: WD2500KS] going for $104 shipped.

As an alternative to the Western Digital drive above, you have the Maxtor 3.0Gbps 250GB 7200RPM 16MB DiamondMax 10 [RTPE: 6V250F0] going for $98 plus shipping, that’s $0.42 per GB. If you’re looking for a drive with a bit more room, the Maxtor 3.0Gbps 300GB 7200RPM 16MB DiamondMax 10 [RTPE: 6V300F0] is going for $122 plus shipping, making that about $0.43 per GB.

For about $0.55 per GB, the Seagate 3.0Gbps 400GB 7200RPM 16MB Barracuda 7200.9 [RTPE: ST3400633AS] is at an all-time low. At the moment, it is going for about $222 shipped.

While we see the Seagate 3.0Gbps 500GB 7200RPM 16MB Barracuda 7200.9 [RTPE: ST3500641AS] going for about $326 shipped, we also see Maxtor’s 3.0Gbps 500GB 7200RPM 16MB DiamondMax 11 [RTPE: 6H500F0] on sale for approximately $330, breaking the cost down to $0.66 per GB.





SATA – 1.5Gbps

Although it’s obvious that the current SATA drives have yet to reach the full 1.5Gbps bandwidth in a single-drive setup, price-wise, it appears that the 3.0Gbps drives are about even with the 1.5Gbps drives. For $0.41 per GB, we can see the Maxtor 1.5Gbps 300GB 7200RPM 16MB DiamondMax 10 [RTPE: 6B300S0] going for $125 shipped. We’ve also noticed that the Western Digital 1.5Gbps 74GB 10000RPM 8MB Raptor [RTPE: WD740GD] on sale for about $140 after a $20 mail-in rebate.

Another decent deal can be had on the Maxtor 1.5Gbps 300GB 7200RPM 16MB MaXLine III [RTPE: 7L300S0], which is currently priced at $109 shipped after a $50 mail-in rebate. We’re also seeing the Western Digital 1.5Gbps 320GB 7200RPM 8MB Caviar SE [RTPE: WD3200JD] that is priced at about $125, making it $0.39 per GB.

If you’re in the market for a large hard drive, Western Digital’s 1.5Gbps 400GB 7200RPM 16MB Caviar SE16 [RTPE: WD4000KD] is a great option that is going for just under an even $200, which makes that about $0.50 per GB.





PATA

The Seagate ATA100 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Barracuda 7200.8 [RTPE: ST3250823A] is going for a great price of about $80 after a $60 mail-in rebate. The Western Digital ATA100 320GB 7200RPM 8MB Caviar SE [RTPE: WD3200JB] is also at an exceptional price of $120 shipped; that's $0.38 per GB.

Currently priced at about $116 plus shipping, the Maxtor ATA100 300GB 7200RPM 16MB DiamondMax 10 [RTPE: 6L300R0] is also a great choice at $0.41 per GB. There are many other drives from which to choose that are going for roughly the same price. Although, do pay attention and try your very best to at least go with a drive that has an 8MB cache. One other thing is that many drives with a 16MB cache can also be had at prices near the same prices as drives with 8MBs of cache.








SCSI

We can see from the price chart below that there are a few decent price reductions, but most of the prices haven’t changed very much. The Hitachi Ultra320 147GB 10000RPM 8MB Ultrastar 10K300 [RTPE: HUS103014FL3800] is currently priced at about $335 plus shipping. That’s approximately $2.33 per GB. If you are looking for a larger 80-pin drive, the Hitachi Ultra320 300GB 10000RPM 8MB Ultrastar 10K300 [RTPE: HUS103030FL3800] appears to be a great choice while being somewhat reasonably priced at $670 shipped.



The SCSI SAS drives seem to be fairly stable, as only the Seagate SAS 37GB 10000RPM 8MB Savvio SAS [RTPE: ST936701SS] has come down about $34, totaling $335 shipped. There are certainly some better deals than that Seagate, which we had just mentioned. For instance, we see the Maxtor SAS 73.5GB 10000RPM 16MB Atlas 10K V SAS [RTPE: 8D073S0] priced at $216 shipped. You can also purchase Maxtor’s SAS 36.7GB 15000RPM 16MB Atlas 15K II SAS [RTPE: 8E036S0] priced at about $216 - that’s $5.87 per GB.

If you’re looking for a larger drive, the Maxtor SAS 73.5GB 15000RPM 16MB Atlas 15K II SAS [RTPE: 8E073S0] is competitively priced at $443, making it $5.90 per GB. As one last suggestion, the Seagate SAS 73GB 15000RPM 8MB Cheetah 15K.4 SAS [RTPE: ST373454SS] is now at about $460 plus shipping.





DVDR

As for DVDR drives, we have a handful of models from which to choose. Though this model is getting somewhat old, we still really like the Pioneer 16X DVR-110D [RTPE: DVR-110D] as it has been proven to be a great burner. It’s currently priced at about $44 shipped. As an update to the DW1625, BenQ recently released the DW1655, which also features the LightScribe technology and the ability to burn DVDR media at 16x. Overall, the BenQ 16X DW1655 [RTPE: DW1655] is an exceptional choice and highly recommended across the internet. At the moment, it is priced at about $50 shipped.



This concludes this week’s price guide. Stick around next week to find out what new CPU trends we may discover! And as always, thanks for reading.