Dual-channel SATA RAID controller comparison

Humm...results are not consistant in application tests. I wonder if they will when drivers will mature... For that reason, I don't like add-on ATA cards. Nothing is at fast as the on-board controller...
 
Ohh, I don't know about that. My Tekram card is pretty good.

(We are not talking about SCSI, you idiot.)

(Oh. Sorry.)

(Anyway, it's my SCSI card.)

Any news on an across-the-board industry switch to SATA yet? I had expected it to be really happening by now, but there doesn't seem to be anything on the radar, just the odd model from Seagate and Western Digital and a good excuse to charge lots extra.
 
I sorta think you're wrong, Tea. Hard disk prices, at least in the USA, are REALLY low. Fire-sale low. Generally under $1/GB for ATA drives, and in some cases only $.80. SATA drives are expensive in comparison but seem more in line with traditional pricing (around $100ish for a decent midrange disk).
 
I see no reason to spend a single penny on changing to SATA drives / adapters at this point.
 
Here in Canada, some S-ATA drives are much more expensive than P-ATA. Examples :

Maxtor 160Gb ATA133 [7200RPM] *8Mb Cache* : 238.16 CAD
Maxtor 160Gb [7200RPM] S-ATA 8Mb : 317.20 CAD

Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 160Gb 7200RPM [S-ATA] $288.08
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 160Gb [7200RPM] *8Mb* $258.96

I don't know why the huge price premium on the maxtors. I guess that people looking for S-ATA should go for seagate's. Still, I won't pay 30$ price premium for S-ATA.

Those are from www.shoplci.com

I also noticed this on that web site :

Western Digital Raptor 120Gb S-ATA [7200] $198.64
Western Digital Raptor 250Gb S-ATA [7200] $501.28

Raptors? Will the new line of S-ATA drives from WD be called Raptor? Or is it some kind of entreprise 7200 RPM drive with a 5 year warranty?
 
zx said:
Western Digital Raptor 120Gb S-ATA [7200] $198.64
Western Digital Raptor 250Gb S-ATA [7200] $501.28

Raptors? Will the new line of S-ATA drives from WD be called Raptor? Or is it some kind of entreprise 7200 RPM drive with a 5 year warranty?
Click to expand...

er..... Raptors? No, those are supposed to be SATA Caviars!
 
flagreen said:
I see no reason to spend a single penny on changing to SATA drives / adapters at this point.
Click to expand...

I don't see any need either if your existing PATA drives are still more than adequate in capacity. moving from PATA to SATA for teh sake of the new interface would be a waste of money!

I only ended with SATA because I wanted a Raptor. as these only come as SATA drive, so I took the opportunity to update my mobo to one with SATA oboard. once I had these board I decided I needed another drive so the best choice was another SATA so I could utilise the free channel.
 
I'm confused Jake. Your post seems to indicate that there's such a thing as adequate storage capacity. I've never heard of such a thing. My ~3TB of disk space is just as inadequate as when it was only ~2TB.
 
SATA optical drives are now key. As far as SATA storage devices go, only SATA hard drives exist at this time. There are no SATA optical drives (CD and DVD readers / recorders) -- yet. Once there are SATA optical drives on the market, then the reason for having parallel ATA ports on the average Joe's new mobo will start to quickly diminish and the age of SATA will truly then be ushered in.

SATA optical drives aren't here, but they ARE COMING. Probably by the end of 2003, there could be a SATA optical drive or two on the market. Philips has already shown a SATA DVD+R/W unit, so there is definitely movement on the SATA front. SATA optical activity will definitely have to occur in 2004.

It's hard to say what all the bargain basement CD/DVD-ROM manufacturers are up to in regards to the conversion to SATA. I would have though that a Ben-Q, Lite-ON, or A-Open would have by now had a "flagship" product using a bridged SATA --> PATA interface, but my guess now is that they may be considering a fully native SATA interface -- presumably in 2004 when more SATA mobos are shipped.

SATA removable magnetic storage (Zip, tape, etc) will eventually show up (2004/2005), unless cheap flash memory ("USB pen drives") take over in a huge way or that truly-inexpensive and expendable "plastic memory" becomes a commercial reality, or removable magnetic goes exclusively external via USB2/Firewire.
 
Mercutio said:
I'm confused Jake. Your post seems to indicate that there's such a thing as adequate storage capacity. I've never heard of such a thing. My ~3TB of disk space is just as inadequate as when it was only ~2TB.
Click to expand...

lol! I guess I should have prefixed that with "In my land, Lilliput, ..."

is part of that 3TB used for backup?
 
Mercutio said:
I sorta think you're wrong, Tea. Hard disk prices, at least in the USA, are REALLY low. Fire-sale low. Generally under $1/GB for ATA drives, and in some cases only $.80. SATA drives are expensive in comparison but seem more in line with traditional pricing (around $100ish for a decent midrange disk).
Click to expand...
$0.65/GB after rebate for the 200GB Maxtor DM+9 I bought a few weeks ago.

In 1989, IIRC, I paid something like $370 for a 20MB Seagate drive, or $18.50/MB. How times have changed...
 
Jake the Dog said:
lol! I guess I should have prefixed that with "In my land, Lilliput, ..."

is part of that 3TB used for backup?
Click to expand...

In Brobdinag, 3TB represents on-line storage only. I'm not counting mirrored disks (there's about another 800GB worth of those, I think). For a long time my storage was tens and tens of 40GB drives. Now it's mostly 120s and 160s with a few 200s. When the chunks get that big, it's very, very easy to add 1TB every two months or so.

At one time I was copying my local video store to divx AVIs. Since I've gotten DVD burners, I've started the process over, and now I'm copying my local video store to DVDs. But at 7ish GB/DVD + 4.5GB per output image, the storage needs are somewhat insane.
 
Fushigi said:
Mercutio said:
I sorta think you're wrong, Tea. Hard disk prices, at least in the USA, are REALLY low. Fire-sale low. Generally under $1/GB for ATA drives, and in some cases only $.80. SATA drives are expensive in comparison but seem more in line with traditional pricing (around $100ish for a decent midrange disk).
Click to expand...
$0.65/GB after rebate for the 200GB Maxtor DM+9 I bought a few weeks ago.

In 1989, IIRC, I paid something like $370 for a 20MB Seagate drive, or $18.50/MB. How times have changed...
Click to expand...

$0.50/GB for the 160GB Maxtor from Staples after rebate/coupon.
 
http://www.hotdealsclub.com

The drive is $149.95. There is a $40 mail-in rebate. There was also a $30 off $150 coupon available, I believe it has now expired. But there are some other coupons available.

It's an online deal, they usually have next day shipping. I guess you could do it instore as well, but they may not accept online coupons.
 
I just got the same deal you did. 160GB drive with an online $30 rebate and a $40 mail-in-rebate from Maxtor. So $149.98 for the drive plus $.40 for a pencil = $150.38 - $30 instant rebate - $40 MIR = $80.38 + sales tax I think. It's a pretty good deal for a 160GB drive though. I wonder if Maxtor is making any money on the deal?

Hopefully I will actually get the rebate from Maxtor; though I have heard that they are more reliable than some in this regard.

I will have 358GB of online storage. Now I just need that LCD and DVD burner and I will be set.
 
timwhit said:
...I wonder if Maxtor is making any money on the deal?...
Click to expand...

Maxtor's either clearing out stock for an upcoming (and unannounced) model, or they have experienced a mismatch between the production line and the warehouse (i.e. -- a recent major drop-off in demand for that model, or those models) and now the warehouse has too many DM+9 drives.

As far as Maxtor goes, I'm interested in a MaxLine II 300 GB. I want to install one in an external Firewire housing (Firewire <---> ATA133) and use it for backing up and/or transporting big media files. This drive will normally just sit around (turned off) awaiting the occasional long sweaty workout about once every month or 2 or whenever the need arises to backup many a gigabyte of video, audio, or TIFF files. At this point, though, I'm waiting for the price of the MaxLine II 300 GB to come down more -- as it has been for the past few weeks.
maxline_ii.jpg
 
Backing up to IDE drives...Yuck!! Greg's spine tingles, and hair stands on end, or is that the cat...????

s
 
The same 160GB Maxtor was on sale at CompUSA about two months ago, for $170 in store -$70 MIR=$100. Given that Staples is giving the $30 discount, the drive was actually cheaper two months ago.

Maxtor rebates are good, I got my $70 dollars yesterday, took about 7 weeks. Best thing is that they email you when they receive your info, and you can check status online at rebateshq.com
 
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