hard drives & prices

I've decided that I want to get a new hard drive for my PC in the next
month or two. I'm going to go SATA. I've been watching prices, and it
looks like 750 GB drives are about $160 right now. 500 GB drives seem to be
about $110.

The last time I bought drives was about a year and a half ago, when I got
5 Seagate 160 GB drives with 5 year warranties for $40 each retail, using a
coupon and price matching. I paid 25c a Gigabyte.

This time I'd like to get a 500 GB or 750 GB drive. It looks like I can
get a 500 GB drive for about 20c a Gigabyte. I had been hoping now that the
1 TB drives are out, that smaller drive prices would plummet. That doesn't
seem to be the case yet. I've seen a couple of specials where 500 GB drives
were $80, and once or twice where the 750 GB drives get down to about $130,
but that's about it.

Anyone have any ideas how soon we might see the 500 GB drives drop under
$80, or the 750 GB drives drop under $130? Thanks!

"OhioGuy" wrote in message ...
I've decided that I want to get a new hard drive for my PC in the next
month or two. I'm going to go SATA. I've been watching prices, and it
looks like 750 GB drives are about $160 right now. 500 GB drives seem to
be
about $110.

The last time I bought drives was about a year and a half ago, when I
got
5 Seagate 160 GB drives with 5 year warranties for $40 each retail, using
a
coupon and price matching. I paid 25c a Gigabyte.

This time I'd like to get a 500 GB or 750 GB drive. It looks like I can
get a 500 GB drive for about 20c a Gigabyte. I had been hoping now that
the
1 TB drives are out, that smaller drive prices would plummet. That
doesn't
seem to be the case yet. I've seen a couple of specials where 500 GB
drives
were $80, and once or twice where the 750 GB drives get down to about
$130,
but that's about it.

Anyone have any ideas how soon we might see the 500 GB drives drop under
$80, or the 750 GB drives drop under $130? Thanks!



You can wait all you want, the only way the price will drop is when you buy
one...
it'll go down the next day.


But seriously...might as well just wait until your old drive is filled to
capactiy
then get the new one

"OhioGuy" wrote:

Anyone have any ideas how soon we might see the 500 GB drives
drop under
$80, or the 750 GB drives drop under $130?

When are mainstream drives going from 7200 to 10,000 (or whatever
higher) rpm?

John Doe wrote:
"OhioGuy" wrote:

Anyone have any ideas how soon we might see the 500 GB drives
drop under
$80, or the 750 GB drives drop under $130?

When are mainstream drives going from 7200 to 10,000 (or whatever
higher) rpm?

Higher RPMs means higher power. Something like the Raptor might be
"short stroked", meaning the platter is smaller than normal. I don't know
if I can come up with documentation from WD on that though.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1175844,00.asp

"The WDC360 also uses a 3-inch platter, versus the 3.5-inch platter
diameter of most desktop drives."

Using a smaller platter would mean a lower capacity drive, and since
people "buy based on GB per dollar", they wouldn't sell. People would
buy the 7200RPM ones instead, because they'd have better GB per dollar.

I presume there might be issues with the recording technology versus
RPM as well. Maybe the latest tech wouldn't work so well at 10K or
15K RPM.

There is a market for the Raptor, to be sure, but it may not be
big enough to justify all the manufacturers competing head to head
in the same market space.

There are some 15K SCSI drives out there, but they aren't cheap, and
likely aren't quiet either. With those, you'd get the benefit of
slightly better seek times.

If shopping for drives, by their characteristics, this database is handy.

http://www.storagereview.com/Testbed4Compare.sr

If money is no object, look at this report. These are flash based
drives. The seek time is measured at 0.065mS. (RAM based drives would
be faster, but even more expensive.) With the right kind of caching
write driver, read and write can be made to behave similarly.

http://mtron.easyco.com/news/papers/...benchmarks.pdf

Paul

Paul wrote:

John Doe wrote:

....

When are mainstream drives going from 7200 to 10,000 (or whatever
higher) rpm?

Higher RPMs means higher power. Something like the Raptor might be
"short stroked", meaning the platter is smaller than normal. I
don't know if I can come up with documentation from WD on that
though.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1175844,00.asp

"The WDC360 also uses a 3-inch platter, versus the 3.5-inch
platter diameter of most desktop drives."

Using a smaller platter would mean a lower capacity drive, and
since people "buy based on GB per dollar", they wouldn't sell.
People would buy the 7200RPM ones instead, because they'd have
better GB per dollar.

Not sure what the platter size is, but the 150 GB Raptor has a
greater data density than the older 37 GB models. I haven't seen
faster benchmark results yet.

I presume there might be issues with the recording technology
versus RPM as well. Maybe the latest tech wouldn't work so well at
10K or 15K RPM.

They need to build the latest technology into the higher RPMs since
speed is part of the equation.

There are some 15K SCSI drives out there, but they aren't cheap,
and likely aren't quiet either. With those, you'd get the benefit
of slightly better seek times.

If shopping for drives, by their characteristics, this database is
handy.

http://www.storagereview.com/Testbed4Compare.sr

If money is no object, look at this report. These are flash based
drives. The seek time is measured at 0.065mS. (RAM based drives
would be faster, but even more expensive.) With the right kind of
caching write driver, read and write can be made to behave
similarly.

At flash drive prices of $80 for 16 GB (almost half the size of my
last hard drive), and given the rapid improvement, flash-based hard
drives are IMO a distinct possibility for the not too distant future.
Maybe we'll see a RAM drive revival.













http://mtron.easyco.com/news/papers/...benchmarks.pdf

Paul