SCSI and SAS
Moving along to the enterprise sector, we'll take a look at the SCSI and SAS drives we have floating around the marketplace. There are a lot of drives being offered in this lineup, so we know looking through the chart may seem a tad overwhelming. We'd like to remind you to make sure you purchase a drive that meets your system requirements. There are drives with a 68-pin interface along with drives using an 80-pin interface, so it's worth double-checking before you purchase anything.
You also have the option of going with a 10,000 or 15,000RPM hard drive. The 15K RPM drives are rather loud, not to mention being expensive and having relatively limited capacities, which is why most people would much rather stick with slower SATA drives in desktop systems. The 15,000RPM SCSI drives are used almost exclusively in the enterprise sector, which accounts for the extremely high prices. If you're looking for the highest capacity 15,000RPM 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 just yet.
There are also SAS drives available for the enterprise market, but you will pay a slightly higher premium than you would for the Ultra 320 drives. There are only three manufacturers listed here, but both Maxtor and Hitachi drives have 16MB of cache while Seagate's offerings only have an 8MB cache. This isn't a huge concern, but we feel it still warrants mention.
Moving along to the enterprise sector, we'll take a look at the SCSI and SAS drives we have floating around the marketplace. There are a lot of drives being offered in this lineup, so we know looking through the chart may seem a tad overwhelming. We'd like to remind you to make sure you purchase a drive that meets your system requirements. There are drives with a 68-pin interface along with drives using an 80-pin interface, so it's worth double-checking before you purchase anything.
You also have the option of going with a 10,000 or 15,000RPM hard drive. The 15K RPM drives are rather loud, not to mention being expensive and having relatively limited capacities, which is why most people would much rather stick with slower SATA drives in desktop systems. The 15,000RPM SCSI drives are used almost exclusively in the enterprise sector, which accounts for the extremely high prices. If you're looking for the highest capacity 15,000RPM 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 just yet.
There are also SAS drives available for the enterprise market, but you will pay a slightly higher premium than you would for the Ultra 320 drives. There are only three manufacturers listed here, but both Maxtor and Hitachi drives have 16MB of cache while Seagate's offerings only have an 8MB cache. This isn't a huge concern, but we feel it still warrants mention.
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beoba - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
It'd be nice if, for the hard drive pages, there were a scatter plot showing capacity/price values across all drives and capacities, such that one could see trends in pricing across the different capacity tiers. (In other words: visually determine if, say, it were more economical to get a 300gb instead of a 250gb in a given month)Crassus - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
Are there any SATA-attached optical drives out on the market or is everything still PATA?Seems that more and more motherboard makers drop the number of available PATA connectors while adding tons of SATA ones.
rrcn - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
There are only two optical drives that I know of which use a SATA interface: both from Plextor -- the PX-716SA/SW and the PX-755SA. I wasn't aware they weren't in the RTPE, but I'll get them added as soon as possible. If I can find any others, I'll also have those added as well.--Haider Farhan
CrystalBay - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
I think it would be useful to add external storage and external optical storage as well...rrcn - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
We've never had a request for external storage devices, but if we receive more feedback regarding this, we'll see about getting external storage components at least added into the RTPE. Also, we try to mainly cover the basics in every one of our price guides because really, we can go on forever covering every single component out there. I cannot make any promises, but I'll pass your suggestion along and see what can be done. :-)--Haider Farhan
Whohangs - Tuesday, July 18, 2006 - link
I would like to see external storage components on the list also.gofor55 - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
Any chance you can include notebook hard drives in this guide next time?rrcn - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
As soon as they're added into the RTPE, we'll gladly do so.I probably should have noted that in the guide before it went live, but I have gone ahead and done so now.
--Haider Farhan
Calin - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
Not all DVD drives are created equal - by example, the Teac drives can not write DVD-RAM, while the LG ones can. While this is probably no show stopper for anybody, it might be nice to know beforehandJarredWalton - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
Having never used DVD-RAM, I figure anyone that needs it for whatever purpose is well aware of the fact. I use relatively inexpensive DVDRs and burn stuff at 8X rather than 16X (just to be safe), and I've used quite a few DVDR drives without problems. I think we've reached the point where it's a lot like CDR support - maybe a few people still worry about that, but for me any CDR capable DVDR drive is sufficient for my needs. Anyway, there are about 5 (or more) DVDRs in the $35-$45 price range that are worth considering. Get whichever one you fancy. :)