Great deal on Hitachi 500gb SATA drives

[Tom Matthies]

Rats!
I just bought a pair of ’em this week at $289/ea.
Darn…
Tom

[Shane Ross]

Sweet. I’m buying 2 more.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[David Roth weiss]

Tom,

If you buy two more at $199.99 your average price will be just $244.50. Thas not bad…

DRW

[David Roth weiss]

Shane,

You’ll have to buy more popsicle sticks too, so that will increase your cost slightly.

[Shane Ross]

Well, the inside of the G5 is full. I need to get an external box now.

Hmmm….maybe I can make it with popsicle sticks…

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Ed Dooley]

It may be a good drive, but to say it’s “highly recommended” by Barefeats seems a misreading of their report:
Ed (not dissing the drive, just saying it’s not tops by Barefeats)

>>>From Barefeats.com 6/27:
The Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 came in second on the Photoshop Rotate test and beat the MaXLine in the ZoneBench test at the 270GB mark, but was third or fourth in the other tests. Its main strength is its half terabyte capacity. Though it has a 16MB internal cache (just like the MaXLine III), that didn’t seem to help it keep up with the MaXLine III, the only other drive with 16MB buffer.
The Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 250GB SATA II is a not a slow drive. It’s just not as fast as the others tested.<<< From Barefeats.com 7/07/06: MORE CONFIDENT OPTIONS We still feel the Maxtor MaXLine III (7V300F0) with its speed and 5 year warranty is the best 300GB SATA drive you can buy. If you need bigger, we think the Hitachi 7K500 and the WD5000KS are solid performers. [David Roth Weiss] “At http://www.mwave.com Hitachi’s Deskstar 7K500 SATA-II drives, their latest 500gb SATA drives, very highly recommended by both Firmtek and Barefeet, are on sale for just $199.90 apeice. Imagine, 2 terrabytes at under $800, its incredible. I’ve got four coming next week.”

[David Roth weiss]

Ed,

When I find the review I was reading I’ll post it… I can’t find it at Barefeets, so I might have mispoken on that account. In any case, at the present time, reliable 500gb SATA drives are not easy to find. The Seagate perpedicular drives are apparently having issues and so are the Maxline Pro 500gb SATAs. The Hitachi drives are the ones to get according to the folks at Firmtek and according to this other review. Until recently I was a huge fan of Maxline, but I was warned off their Maxline Pro 500gb drives, and their 300gb drives, of which I own about a dozen, aren’t available now for some reason.

DRW

[Ed Dooley]

I became a fan of the Maxlines too. There was no way that I would have bought a Maxtor drive until
they changed their ways, and the Maxline’s reliability and performance proved it (and a 5 year warranty these days is pretty good too).
As for the Barefeats.com review, they often do a first look at a drive, then go back later for another look
and/or to compare it to other drives as they come out. I don’t doubt that you saw a good review, the ones
I referenced didn’t gush over the Hitachi, but others that I didn’t see might have compared it to a whole
different set of drives where it excelled, or did a RAID test or comparison.
Ed

[David Roth weiss]

Ed,

Regardless of the benchmarks, at $199.90 I’ll settle. I’m gonna be striping (4) 500gb drives together anyway, and I doubt the slight differences in speed will mean much anyway. BTW, I’m guessing the 1-terrabyte drives are on the way soon, so they’re liquidating everything else as fast as possible.

DRW

[Ed Dooley]

750G drives are already out, and all the reports I’ve read about 1TB drives is that they’ll be out in 2007.
A long way from my first array using the biggest drives in the world at the time, 3g drives, each costing
$3,600. My 4 drive, 11 1/2 gig array cost $14,400!
Ed

[David Roth Weiss] “Regardless of the benchmarks, at $199.90 I’ll settle. I’m gonna be striping (4) 500gb drives together anyway, and I doubt the slight differences in speed will mean much anyway. BTW, I’m guessing the 1-terrabyte drives are on the way soon, so they’re liquidating everything else as fast as possible.”