Hard Drive $/GB comparison

[ddrueding]

As part of a large project I'm working on, I ran some quick numbers on OEM SATA 8MB hard drives of various capacities and their current price on Newegg. If anyone can give me some space to host the images I can post the graphs, but here's the key points:

Lowest $/GB: 0.544 - Maxtor 250GB ($136)
Cheapest Desktop Drive: WD 80GB ($59)

For my purpose (lots of drives on a RAID array) the Hitachi 400GB ($308) seems to be the way to go. At with a $/GB ratio of 0.77, it's the best at this capacity. It's likely that the additional cost per port on RAID controlers would justify the increase from 0.7 in the 300GB capacity (Seagate @ $210).

 

[mubs]

IMHO, you could have saved some work by leaving out brands like Maxtor.

The 300GB Seagates are being dissed in many places for high failure rates.

 

[ddrueding]

I know that Seagate, Samsung and Hitachi get good marks, but I didn't realise that any brand other than WD was worth ignoring altogether.

 

[MaxBurn]

IMHO, you could have saved some work by leaving out brands like Maxtor.

The 300GB Seagates are being dissed in many places for high failure rates.

What places? I would like to have a look, I just had one fail on me.

 

[mubs]

There's several bad reviews on Amazon. There are some gripes I remember reading on SR and on Ben's Bargains. Newer high-capacity Seagates appear to run very hot. Their warranty support apparently has gone to the dogs. While I don't believe everything I read, there are many signs that Seagate is fast sinking to the level of Maxtor and WD.

I see that Maxtor drives have the most # of rebates, and are available for the cheapest price. Next in line is Seagate, then WD. I see a few rebates for Hitachi, and none for Samsung (which seems to be the most expensive of the group because of the lack of rebates). You have to wonder why Maxtor and Seagate need to have an endless stream of rebates to tempt users to buy.

I'm going to stick with Samsung and Hitachi for now.

 

[LunarMist]

Well, I don't know about the 300GB drive, but I added a couple of PATA 7200.8 400GB drives when they were released in November. They don't seem particularly hot and are relatively quiet. One is running about 18 hours per day with about 450 cycles.

 

[CougTek]

I see that Maxtor drives have the most # of rebates, and are available for the cheapest price. Next in line is Seagate, then WD. I see a few rebates for Hitachi, and none for Samsung (which seems to be the most expensive of the group because of the lack of rebates). You have to wonder why Maxtor and Seagate need to have an endless stream of rebates to tempt users to buy.

I'm going to stick with Samsung and Hitachi for now.

Applying the same logic to computer brands, we should buy Compaq desktops instead of Dell boxes because we should worry why Dell offers so many coupons/rebates and Compaq isn't... :roll:

The Maxtor drives I've own so far haven't let me down. I just don't see a good reason to suddenly be afraid of them.

 

[Santilli]

Has Compaq got better, since merging with HP, or worse?
s

 

[Bookmage]

Odd... I picked up 2 Seagate 7200.8 400GB PATA drives from Compusa back in December and they've run pretty well for the most part. A couple of weeks ago, one of the 400s started getting random windows errors. A Seagate software scan showed it had errors and repeated attempts to fix it worked? but then errors would show up again. So I quickly copied the data off and scanned it some more. So now I've got a Seagate 400GB to RMA. A week later, the other drive clicked a couple times and windows had a delayed write failure before losing the fat? table. I had to format and run some recovery software. I was considering buying some of the 300GB Seagates, but I'm gonna wait and see how things resolve. I haven't heard too many positive things about Seagate lately and that's troublesome. Hitachi on the other hand has been getting some positive reviews...
Now why can't Samsung cough up some 300GB and 400GB drives.