Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1393




Introduction

Welcome back for this week's Price Guide. Not too much has changed in storage within the last few weeks, but prices are still going down, which makes now a good time to think about your data storage, as well as backup solutions. Read on to find the best deals on hard drives and on DVD burners to back up your all-important files, documents, and data.

As usual, be sure to check out our RealTime Pricing Engine for the latest prices and deltas.




DVD Burners

With dual-layer media still nearly non-existent, not to mention being very expensive if you can find it, we won't place too much emphasis on DL capability with this guide, even though many drives now come with it as a standard feature or are easily flash-upgradeable to have that capability. Until media for DL burning starts hitting store shelves, and in meaningful numbers, we won't be too concerned about this.

Since our last guide covering DVD burners, not too much has changed, nor have many new or better models hit the market. For this reason, the NuTech 8X DDW-082 gets this week's recommendation for its nearly rock-bottom price and for its burn quality. The NEC-2500A is also a good burner - we use both as our burners of choice in the lab. If speed is an issue for you and you'd like to move up to 12x burning, the Plextor 12X PX-712A is a great choice, but you will pay a premium for that speed boost.

Since there will always be early adopters, Dual Layer drives still need to get a fair mention in this guide. Sony's DRU-700A (or the idential LiteON SOHW-832S) still stands out from the crowd with its media compatibility, speed, and ability to burn dual layer DVDs. Again, only if you are able to procure the prerequisite media. In any case, this drive will future-proof you for a quite bit longer than non-DL capable drives, which is something to keep in mind when looking at the price tag associated with the DRU-700A.
Many have asked why we do not recommend the ND-2510A. As far as our tests have shown, the dual layer capabilities of the ND-2510A are not very great. The drive does not write dependably to dual layer discs yet.





Hard Drives: Parallel ATA

With the recent introduction of Hitachi's 400GB Deskstar, it's easy to see that hard drive manufacturers are finding ways to improve capacity to levels most of us couldn't fully utilize if our lives depended on it. Short of video editing, most of us won't need that level of storage capacity for quite some time to come. Luckily, Seagate still has us covered with their 160GB Barracuda 7200.7 Plus. With plenty of space for gaming, some video editing, and every office suite that you need, this drive also manages to perform well enough to keep file copies, game loading, and video encoding moving at a brisk pace. This drive sports the seemingly standard spindle speed of 7200 RPMs and an 8MB cache as well.






Hard Drives: Serial ATA

With SATA making itself more noticeable on new motherboard releases, it's certainly not a bad idea to consider it when contemplating a new hard drive purchase.

For those building a new system or adding to a system that can support SATA devices, Seagate again comes to us with their 160GB, 7200 RPM drive in SATA flavor. For only a few bucks more than its PATA counterpart, this drive performs just as well and gives you the benefits of using the newer SATA interface such as better case airflow due to smaller cables and future compatibility.

On the performance side, either of the two available Western Digital Raptors still maintain top transfer and seek rates, thanks to their 10,000 RPM speeds (among other aspects.) Short of SCSI, the Raptors are your best bet if disk I/O is crucial for your needs.






Hard Drives: SCSI

As always, there are cases when IDE-based storage just can't provide the level of performance or reliability that is often associated with SCSI devices. For this reason, there are a few SCSI drives that might be worth your consideration the next time you buy a hard drive.

In the 36.7GB area, you can usually find a reasonable cost:storage ratio, which brings us to Hitachi's Ultra320 36.7GB 10,000RPM drive. For just a little bit above the cost of a Western Digital Raptor of the same size, you can obtain the level of disk I/O that many business applications and databases require, and do so without breaking the bank. Depending on your needs, the 15,000 RPM variation of this drive might be more appropriate. In either case, the price is certainly competitive compared to most other SCSI offerings.

For a more space-oriented mindset, Fujitsu's Ultra 320 73GB 10,000 RPM drive is sitting pretty this week as far as cost is concerned. The 10,000RPM drive also manages to be slightly cheaper per-gigabyte compared to Hitachi's offerings in the 36.7GB area.


Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now