Price Guide, November 2005: Storage

Introduction

Unfortunately, many of the drives in this November 2005 edition of our storage price guide have remained near the same price range as in our last edition. As we get closer and closer to the holiday season, we're confident to say that you will find some exceptional deals in the coming editions - after all, Black Friday is only a week away!

Although they are still outrageously priced, many more SAS drives have been released into the market. For you SATA users, we have some good news. The 3.0Gbps drives have reached approximately the same price as to the 1.5Gbps drives, making them generally a better buy. Higher quality DVDRs have become a must have these days for any new rig, be sure to read through our guide as you may find something that you were looking for.

And how can we forget, bookmark our RTPE system page at http://labs.anandtech.com/; the only system that will bring you up to the minute prices for much of your hardware component needs without any bias.

To start off our guide, we'll take a look at how the newer SATA 3.0Gbps drives are fairing.

SATA - 3.0Gbps

We're not seeing much of any price fluctuations this week with the SATA 3.0Gbps drives. A few have gone up and a few have gone down, but nothing too significant. The best bang for the buck this week is going to have to be the 250GB Western Digital Caviar SE16 7200RPM with 16MB of cache [RTPE: WD2500KS] and you'll also see this drive has had a small price reduction of $16, brining the total to $109.00 shipped.

If you're looking for more drive space, the 500GB Seagate Barracuda (7200.9) 7200RPM with 16MB of cache [RTPE: ST3500641AS] is down $7.00 for a grand total of $350.00 shipped, about $0.70 per GB. However, you would be saving $132.00 if you were to go with two of the WD drives we recommended above rather than a single 500GB Seagate. Our opinion? Save your $132.00 and go with two of the WD's instead.

If you would take a look at the graph below, you can see the 500GB Seagate has been on a healthy decline since it was initially released. We're expecting it to drop a bit more before it steadies out.

Seagate 3.0Gbps 500GB 7200RPM 16MB Barracuda 7200.9

Not all of us need that kind of density, so if you're looking for something basic, we suggest you don't go with any drive lower than an 80GB. Any lower, and you will be spending too much money per GB. We suggest the 80GB Hitachi Deskstar 7K80 (7200RPM, 8MB cache) [RTPE: HDS728080PLA380] for about $57.00.