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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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).
We have addressed this concern at the beginning of the article. =)
quote: We have had many requests from our readers to include laptop hard drives in our storage price guides and we are going to address this request officially, here and now. Previously, our pricing engine only tracked desktop hard drives. We are actually in the process of adding laptop hard drives to the RTPE, since a large number of people use laptops these days and they, too, can also use more hard drive capacity. Once the laptop hard drives are added into the RTPE, we will begin including them in our monthly storage guides.
We are hoping to get this project completed within the next two months or so. We kindly ask you please to bear with us and keep checking to see when they are in fact listed in our storage guides.
Too bad they didn't mention the Samsung Spinpoint series.
I was looking for a 250gb SATA to replace a old 100gb 2mb/cache IDE drive (giving to dad)... I checked out StorageReview.com and they had a VERY NICE round up of 250gb drives.
After looking at the data, I choose the Samsung Spinpoint 250GB SATA2 w/8mb cache drive. The drive is fast, and the coolest and quietest option in the group.
In this AT article they mentioned the Maxtor 250gb drive is a good bargain at 98$ shipped.... Well, I think the Samsung I bought for $97.99 shipped from NewEgg is a better deal.
As was mentioned in the article, there are a LOT of good deals on hard drives. WD, Samsung, Maxtor, and Hitachi all offer 250GB SATA 3.0Gbps drives for around $100, and any of those are worthy of consideration. Personally, I like the WD 16MB SE models, but the others are good as well. The Samsung drives *are* the quietest on the market, but there really isn't a massive difference between many of the HDDs... except that Maxtors are generally louder on seek noise. (Gary Key described them to me as "bongo drums" not to long ago! :) )
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15 Comments
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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.rrcn - Sunday, March 12, 2006 - link
We have addressed this concern at the beginning of the article. =)SnoMunke - Sunday, March 12, 2006 - link
Hitachi has been producing SAS drives for awhile...http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...
rrcn - Sunday, March 12, 2006 - link
Thanks for the heads up. We'll be adding it shortly. =)Souka - Sunday, March 12, 2006 - link
Too bad they didn't mention the Samsung Spinpoint series.I was looking for a 250gb SATA to replace a old 100gb 2mb/cache IDE drive (giving to dad)... I checked out StorageReview.com and they had a VERY NICE round up of 250gb drives.
After looking at the data, I choose the Samsung Spinpoint 250GB SATA2 w/8mb cache drive. The drive is fast, and the coolest and quietest option in the group.
In this AT article they mentioned the Maxtor 250gb drive is a good bargain at 98$ shipped.... Well, I think the Samsung I bought for $97.99 shipped from NewEgg is a better deal.
My $.02.
Oh yeah, here's a link to the Storage Review review.... http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200601/250_1...">LINK
JarredWalton - Sunday, March 12, 2006 - link
As was mentioned in the article, there are a LOT of good deals on hard drives. WD, Samsung, Maxtor, and Hitachi all offer 250GB SATA 3.0Gbps drives for around $100, and any of those are worthy of consideration. Personally, I like the WD 16MB SE models, but the others are good as well. The Samsung drives *are* the quietest on the market, but there really isn't a massive difference between many of the HDDs... except that Maxtors are generally louder on seek noise. (Gary Key described them to me as "bongo drums" not to long ago! :) )