Price Guides, May 2005: Storage

Serial ATA Hard Drives

Like our other storage price guides, the standard approach for choosing the best hard drive since the beginning of the hard drive has been to calculate the cost per gigabyte of the hard drive; what gives the most storage for the buck. Cache sizes and spin speed aside, most hard drives are created equally enough that 1GB of Brand A still equates to 1GB of Brand B. Just to get started, we compiled a short list of most Serial ATA drives on the market today and their relative cost per GB; lower is better.

Product	Size (GB)	Approximate Cost (May '05)	Cost Per GB
Western Digital U150 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Caviar SE	250	$127.00	$0.51
Hitachi U150 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Deskstar 7K250	250	$127.49	$0.51
Maxtor U150 250GB 7200RPM 8MB MaXLine Plus II	250	$129.00	$0.52
Seagate U150 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Barracuda 7200.8	250	$129.00	$0.52
Hitachi U300 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Deskstar T7K250	250	$130.00	$0.52
Western Digital U150 200GB 7200RPM 8MB Caviar SE	200	$105.00	$0.53
Maxtor U150 200GB 7200RPM 8MB DiamondMax Plus 9	200	$107.50	$0.54
Maxtor U150 200GB 7200RPM 8MB DiamondMax 10	200	$109.49	$0.55
Western Digital U150 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Caviar RE	250	$137.00	$0.55
Hitachi U150 160GB 7200RPM 8MB Deskstar 7K250	160	$89.00	$0.56
Western Digital U150 160GB 7200RPM 8MB Caviar SE	160	$89.00	$0.56
Maxtor U150 160GB 7200RPM 8MB DiamondMax Plus 9	160	$91.00	$0.57
Seagate U150 200GB 7200RPM 8MB Barracuda 7200.8	200	$117.00	$0.58
Seagate U150 200GB 7200RPM 8MB Barracuda 7200.7	200	$117.04	$0.59
Maxtor U150 160GB 7200RPM 8MB DiamondMax 10	160	$95.50	$0.60
Samsung U150 160GB 7200RPM 8MB SpinPoint P	160	$96.95	$0.61
Hitachi U300 160GB 7200RPM 8MB Deskstar T7K250	160	$97.00	$0.61
Seagate U150 160GB 7200RPM 8MB Barracuda 7200.7	160	$99.00	$0.62
Seagate U150 300GB 7200RPM 8MB Barracuda 7200.8	300	$185.99	$0.62
Hitachi U150 400GB 7200RPM 8MB Deskstar 7K250	400	$265.00	$0.66
Western Digital U150 160GB 7200RPM 8MB Caviar RE	160	$106.00	$0.66
Maxtor U150 300GB 7200RPM 16MB DiamondMax 10	300	$205.95	$0.69
Maxtor U150 300GB 7200RPM 16MB MaXLine III	300	$208.50	$0.69
Maxtor U150 120GB 7200RPM 8MB DiamondMax Plus 9	120	$83.66	$0.70
Seagate U150 120GB 7200RPM 8MB Barracuda 7200.7	120	$83.75	$0.70
Hitachi U150 120GB 7200RPM 8MB Deskstar 7K250	120	$83.50	$0.70
Samsung U150 120GB 7200RPM 8MB SpinPoint P	120	$84.45	$0.70
Seagate U150 120GB 7200RPM 8MB Barracuda 7200.7	120	$83.70	$0.70
Western Digital U150 120GB 7200RPM 8MB Caviar SE	120	$84.00	$0.70
Maxtor U150 120GB 7200RPM 8MB DiamondMax 10	120	$86.00	$0.72
Western Digital U150 80GB 7200RPM 8MB Caviar SE	80	$57.40	$0.72
Maxtor U150 80GB 7200RPM 8MB DiamondMax Plus 9	80	$59.60	$0.74
Hitachi U300 80GB 7200RPM 8MB Deskstar 7K80	80	$59.00	$0.74
Maxtor U150 250GB 7200RPM 16MB DiamondMax 10	250	$189.55	$0.76
Seagate U150 400GB 8MB 7200RPM Barracuda 7200.8	400	$305.62	$0.76
Maxtor U150 250GB 7200RPM 8MB DiamondMax Plus 9	250	$189.00	$0.76
Seagate U150 80GB 7200RPM 8MB Barracuda 7200.7	80	$63.49	$0.79
Western Digital U150 74GB 10000RPM 8MB Raptor	74	$181.00	$2.45
Western Digital U150 36.7GB 10000RPM 8MB Raptor	36.7	$113.00	$3.08

Keep in mind, our price engine constantly updates the prices on products, but the table above reflects the cost per GB of products that we listed on May 6th, 2005. For those who like to gamble on mail-in rebates, there are actually some better prices out there particularly through Fry's and Buy.com. The sweet spot for SATA drives clearly appears to be the 250GB range, with the most competitive alternative - the 200GB drives. This is more or less on par with the same price trends a few weeks ago during our last guide, although all drives have dropped at least 4 cents per GB.

The huge announcement over the last few weeks was the launch of SATA II drives. These SATA II drives, which we denote as U300, are actually extremely competitive per GB compared to some of the other drives available. Giving SATA II drives the moniker of U300 (300Mbps) is slightly incorrect as SATA II drives can also operate at U150 speeds as well. However, all drives that we know of will use the U300 speed bus and we will continue to differentiate it this way until SATA I drives obtain U300 speeds (which seems unlikely) or SATA II drives start to utilize U150 speeds (which also seems unlikely). For those really interested in a fun conjecture between the way that products should be named, take a look at SATA's webpage on the topic (which is not called SATA-IO). Politics aside, we've highlighted these new drives in bold in the cost per GB breakdown above. As of time of publication, availability on SATA II drives was very limited; ZipZoomFly and Mwave appear to be the only merchants with any availability on Hitachi drives - and Samsung SATAII drives just came out of preorder on Monarch Computer at that time of publication. Below, you can see what the RTPE scraped together on SATA II drives this week:



Of course, the debate still rages if SATA II really holds a significant advantage over SATA I. We have a few analyses in the works that give a complete breakdown of real world speeds with both SATAs pitted against each other, but the reality of hard drives is that the bottleneck is not the bus, but the mechanics of the drive itself. 3Gbps SATA is backwards compatible with SATA 1.5Gbps. Anyone who has played with a SATA device before knows that the largest problem with the technology is the awful interface cable. SATA II supposedly fixes this problem a little by adding a retention clip to the cable interface, which some manufacturers have been doing anyway. From our talks with manufacturers, it appears as though SATA II will completely replace SATA I very soon and very quickly, but since the only changes are a retention clip and an imaginary increase in bus speed, we will leave the final word to the upcoming reviews. There is only a dollar or two premium on SATA II right now, which makes it a fairly reasonable buy, but don't expect miracles for performance.

On the other hand, there are some who claim that the 3Gbps interface lives up to all that it claims. We will have more details very soon!



It's always great to see SATA drive prices drop, and the last two months have certainly seen their share of price cuts on SATA devices. The current cost per GB leader, the Western Digital 250GB Caviar SE [RPTE: WD2500JD] recently just dropped to about $125, down from $140 two months ago. Even the OEM versions of this drive come with a three-year warranty as well. Below, you can see the price trend on this drive:

Western Digital U150 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Caviar SE

However, the real curve setters are the high density Seagate 7200.8 Barracuda drives. We have already seen a $100 reduction in price on the 250GB drive since its introduction five months ago, and we see only moderate signs that this will let up in the near future. The NCQ ready 7200.8 drives cost only a few bucks more than their 7200.7 counterparts, so it's easy for us to give them our full recommendation for SATA drives. Below, you can see the detailed price curve on the 250GB 7200.8 Barracuda drive that also sets the cost per GB very low for SATA drives this month:

Seagate U150 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Barracuda 7200.8