I checked out tomshardware but it isn't all that easy to drill down on which drive is the best in this price range at the moment.

Looking for the best intersection of perfomance per dollar and mb per dollar that isn't a raptor drive.

I assume any of the newer perp recording drives will work equally well?

1/8/2007 3:33:39 PM

I just put two of Seagate's 250GB SATA 3.0 perp recording drives in our office computer.

75 bux from New Egg for each.

1/8/2007 10:12:21 PM

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
5/5 eggs over 920 reviews
$95 shipped
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148140

1/8/2007 11:43:48 PM

^ yep, I'm gonna get one soon i think...

[Edited on January 9, 2007 at 9:51 AM. Reason : cheapest gb/$ ratio]

1/9/2007 9:50:42 AM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148108

500gb seagate was just on sale yesterday for $146 after shipping...not today, though

1/9/2007 2:30:02 PM

400gb seagate on outpost for $109

1/9/2007 3:00:22 PM

OMFG...outpost still exists?

1/9/2007 8:22:31 PM

i think it's actually fry's

1/9/2007 11:00:16 PM

one in the same... I've picked up several Maxtor 300/320 GB drives that turned out to be marked SATA 3.0 (vs. 1.5 when I ordered them) while on sale for $70 w/ free shipping (thanks SD!). Have yet to see if "I got what I paid for" but they're doing well

1/10/2007 11:55:14 AM

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 3.5" Hard Drive
Model #: ST3320620AS
· 320GB, 7200 RPM
· SATA 3.0Gb/s
· 16MB Cache
Price: $89.99

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 3.5" Hard Drive
Model #: ST3500630AS
· 500GB, 7200 RPM
· SATA 3.0Gb/s
· 16MB Cache
Price: $139.99

http://promotions.newegg.com/NEemail/promo010907in/HDD/index.html?CMP=EMC-PR-Bigsaving-I-010907&ATT=HDD

1/10/2007 9:22:17 PM

^ 500 gig is .1 cent / gig cheaper.... but hey, more bang

1/11/2007 3:01:17 PM

^ not really...it's $145.93 after shipping...the 320gb is $89.99 and has free shipping...the 400gb from outpost/fry's is $109.99 with free shipping, so:

320gb = $0.281/gb
400gb = $0.275/gb
500gb = $0.292/gb

the 400gb is the best bang for your buck...which, incidentally, is the one i just ordered as the 320gb is too small for me

1/11/2007 3:07:36 PM

Quote :

"the 400gb from outpost/fry's is $109.99"

yeah, but it's .9, not .10, meaning no perpendicular recording

1/11/2007 3:20:55 PM

OH THEY FUCKING LIED...i specifically saw "perpendicular recording" on their features page (didn't even pay attention to the .9, so that's my own fault)...i swear, it was up there yesterday

outpost/fry's CONSISTENTLY fucks up their specs pages (as noted by fleetwud)...so help me, if that bastard isn't a .10, i'm gonna be pissed

EDIT: for example, i just checked the datasheet and even though it's supposed to be a 300mb/s drive, it's actually a 3gb/s drive...all things considered, it's not THAT big of a deal, especially since all that will happen is they'll let me return it for free (and i need the drive), but dammit all

[Edited on January 11, 2007 at 3:39 PM. Reason : .]

1/11/2007 3:33:25 PM

may be a .10 -

Quote :

"I've bought four of the SATA drives and all have been the 7200.10 variety. YMMV."

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=203938

link in question:
http://www.outpost.com/product/4799749

last day for deal

[Edited on January 11, 2007 at 3:55 PM. Reason : .]

1/11/2007 3:54:01 PM

I purchased a .10 Seagate last month; it's made a massive difference for my system (of course, I've been running WinXP on a seven year old, 15GB Caviar so the change is more visible...). I love the drive though: quiet and efficient.

1/11/2007 4:54:18 PM

well, my purchase is going into an external usb enclosure (not even e.sata), so i don't think it'll make a lick of difference...but i was just going over the other two drives i bought from them and sure enough, they're .10 (despite the fact that i KNOW they didn't mention it when i bought them)

outpost/fry's wtf?

1/11/2007 5:39:14 PM

it came in less than 48 hours on free shipping...i am impressed...400gb 3gb/s 7200.9 for $110 isn't that bad...i'm not too happy about the false advertising of perpendicular recording, but as i said, it's going into an enclosure and i'll probably sell it before it ever goes into my machine itself

[Edited on January 12, 2007 at 1:44 PM. Reason : ,]

1/12/2007 1:43:59 PM

http://shop3.outpost.com/product/5080555
500 GB SATA 3.0 16 MB buffer 7200 rpm 8.5 ms seek
$0.25998/GB with free shipping $129.99

[Edited on January 12, 2007 at 9:29 PM. Reason : G]

1/12/2007 9:28:21 PM

^ well...son of a bitch

i might care more if it were a seagate...i've had nothing but problems with WD and maxtor in the past

1/12/2007 10:42:39 PM

seagate now owns maxtor and that drive carries 5 year warranty

1/12/2007 10:49:10 PM

^^i believe that's an enterprise drive too:
http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuitem.ba88f6d7cf664718376049b291346068/?channelpath=/en_us/Products/Enterprise%20Storage/MaXLine%20Family/MaXLine%20Pro%20500

1/14/2007 1:52:47 PM

Quote :

"even though it's supposed to be a 300mb/s drive, it's actually a 3gb/s drive"

what?

1/14/2007 2:40:22 PM

Quote :

"seagate now owns maxtor and that drive carries 5 year warranty"

Quote :

"i believe that's an enterprise drive too"

which is why i called fry's on their misrepresentation of the perpendicularity (haha) of the drive...they're reimbursing me the shipping back, and knocking $10 off the maxtor

Quote :

"what?"

it had been a long day

1/14/2007 6:17:32 PM

Encouraged by this thread, and it was something I have been meaning to do for a few months anyway, I decided to pick up a new SATAII drive to replace my old one (which laughably, was made in 2000 and was ata/66, talk about slow).

I also decided to finally move from 2k to XP.

And it's motherfucking mind boggling, to install the SATA drivers during the XP setup so that the setup can talk to the disk, IT ONLY LOOK FOR A MOTHER FUCKING FLOPPY.

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS SHIT?

A FLOPPY? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

It's 2007 and the XP install will only look for a floppy to take the drivers from. I think I might have a floppy drive laying around here somewhere, but I highly doubt I actually have a floppy disk to copy the drivers to.

Does anyone know how to get around this (while I google)?

1/15/2007 8:23:51 PM

Keep in mind, XP came out in 2001, so you're behind the times by about 5 years. With Vista you can use any removable media (usb flash drive / floppy / cdrom)

^you should be able to create a cd image with a floppy format

[Edited on January 15, 2007 at 9:00 PM. Reason : .]

1/15/2007 8:59:11 PM

^^What ^ said... Maximum PC has a pretty good guide on slipstreaming drivers into an XP install http://maximumpc.com/2005/01/how_to_slipstre.html

[Edited on January 16, 2007 at 1:14 AM. Reason : ]

1/16/2007 1:14:29 AM

damn man, win2k can format a disc from the cd fresh........ xp can't do that? oh wait, you never installed the bios drivers for SATA before or something?! well durr man....

or are you talking about RAID?

[Edited on January 16, 2007 at 8:39 AM. Reason : ?]

1/16/2007 8:38:04 AM

Apparently XP is old enough that it doesn't have any SATA drivers so it doesn't see my new drive during the install process. You have to press F6 to get the option to install SCSI or RAID drivers from a diskette.

1/16/2007 9:59:23 AM

lame..... i don't think my mobo even came with sata floppies...

1/16/2007 10:14:43 AM

Yea, my board has a page the instructs you to copy a directory over to a floppy, press S when instructed during the install process, and wait a minute (i kid you not, it says this)

1/16/2007 10:16:03 AM

wow..... that's kinda sad.... I'll be making that slipstream disc when i decide to do all of this....

1/16/2007 10:18:38 AM

Well, I got the drivers to a disk, installed XP, then on the first real boot I get BSOD'd. Apparently, on the first reboot, XP reverts back to some generic IDE driver and pukes on itself, as documented here

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=51140&pid=357436&mode=threaded&start=

So, anyone play with nLite?

1/16/2007 10:42:48 PM

yeah, i use nLite all the time

1/16/2007 11:22:50 PM

So I ended up installing XP on my SATA drive while the old C: main drive is sill in the system. At the moment, when I boot, it asks if I want to go into 2000 or XP, and it has XP as drive D:. As soon as I get all my bookmarks, settings, blah blah blah, off of my old drive onto my new one, I'll be taking it out. I assume the SATA drive will revert to C:, will that cause a problem with anything I install now, or with the OS itself? Should I wait to install software to the new drive until it is C:?

1/19/2007 2:28:35 PM

lol ummm, someone else want this one?

1/20/2007 2:55:49 AM

Nevermind, I just reinstalled with only the SATA drive connected.

My old drive had burst/sustained read of 59Mb/s and 30Mb/s, the new one does 172.4 and 78.

Feels like a brand new machine.

1/20/2007 10:11:34 AM

ive never had to use drivers for sata drives...ive installed windows on them right out of the box

why did you think you had to use a floppy...you weren't using raid were you?

1/20/2007 11:24:42 AM

SP2 has the drivers built in. The original XP didn't.

1/20/2007 11:51:23 AM

i don't think sp2 had them built in, either...or, at least my retail copy of winxp sp2 didn't...i slipstreamed the whole thing with my mobo sata drivers

1/20/2007 12:17:09 PM

the discrepancy may be explained by the fact that you doubtless had different SATA chipsets... but then again.. who fucking cares? put the fucking floppy in and hit F6.

while we're at it, what's the point of slipstreaming mobo-specific drivers into an install? when you burn a slipstreamed CD it reorders the data on the CD from the optimized layout on the production CD to alphabetical order or some shit and causes the install process to take like 4x as long, to save 25 seconds once every 6 months to a year when you reinstall Windows on that one computer you burned a slipstreamed CD for?

1/20/2007 2:05:46 PM

Quote :

"...and causes the install process to take like 4x as long"

complete BS

[Edited on January 20, 2007 at 2:40 PM. Reason : .]

1/20/2007 2:40:08 PM

Quote :

"the discrepancy may be explained by the fact that you doubtless had different SATA chipsets... but then again.. who fucking cares? put the fucking floppy in and hit F6."

You didn't read all the posts or the link I included. Apparently, it might be specific to my mobo, but hitting F6 gets XP to install, then on first boot up, gives BSODs as XP reverts back to some other IDE driver. It's well documented with the nf4 chipset and it was exactly what was happening to me.

Other users indicated that the SP2 had updated nf4/sata drivers and didn't need any slipstreaming, and this is exactly what happened for me.

And it took about 7-8 minutes to install XP with SP2 + updates through Nov slipstreamed, I can't imagine it taking 1.5-2 minutes to do in the non slipstreamed case.

1/20/2007 3:03:39 PM

Quote :

"...and causes the install process to take like 4x as long"

complete BS

1/20/2007 3:29:00 PM

can't beat buying a TB for under $300

1/23/2007 8:47:06 AM