Price Guide, December 2005: Storage

Introduction

Welcome to the latest edition of our storage price guide. It's getting awfully close to the end of the annual holiday shopping extravaganza, but last minute gifts can still be had for great prices. Check out our RTPE at http://labs.anandtech.com/ for your holiday pricing needs.

Just as all other products, the last week before Christmas is when most hardware prices are jacked way up, so this weekend is your last real chance to get in on the better deals. We have noticed that there aren't many mail-in rebates (MIRs) this week, but hard drive pricing is still at a great low point.

SAS drives are beginning to drop to lower prices, slowly nearing the cost of the Ultra 320 drives. Though not at the lowest prices we have seen, DVDR's are at decent prices, making many of them outstanding options.

Alright, well that's enough of that, let's get going by taking a bite into the real meat of our guide. First off we'll take a gander at the 3.0Gbps drives....

SATA - 3.0Gbps

Many of the 3.0Gbps drive have either gone up in price or have stayed readily the same. However, we are seeing two of Seagate's drives, the new 200GB [RTPE: ST3200827AS] and 500GB [RTPE: ST3500641AS] 7200.9 Barracudas have gone down approximately $11 and $18, respectively. Luckily, the 500GB drive has a $40 mail-in rebate dropping it to $310 which is valid until early January; while the 200GB drive is going for $140 shipped.

Between the two drives mentioned above, you'll get more bang for your buck going with the 500GB Seagate at $0.62 per GB.

Although the best 3.0Gbps hard drive purchase you can make this week would be the Western Digital 250GB Caviar SE [RTPE: WD2500JS] going for $100, making that about $0.40 per GB. You can see from the graph below that this drive is currently at, or is very close to its lowest price yet.

Western Digital 3.0Gbps 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Caviar SE

If you are looking for a high density drive, one of the excellent drives we suggest you look into is the 500GB Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 [RTPE: HDS725050KLA360] on sale for $365.