IDE storage prices tumbling?

[Davis Rorgh]

I have not been keeping a close watch on the price of IDE hard disks here in
the UK but I took a look at prices recently and they seem to have fallen a
lot.

I know it's all "faster and cheaper" with a lot of computer equipment but it
seems that HDDs have really taken a big drop.

I am looking at paying no more than £60 (about $105) for a 160 GB hard drive
from a reputable manufacturer (WD, Seagate, Samsung) including all taxes.

Have IDE HDD prices fallen more than normal?

Is this because of theintroduction of SATA?

 

[J. Clarke]

I have not been keeping a close watch on the price of IDE hard disks here
in the UK but I took a look at prices recently and they seem to have
fallen a lot.

I know it's all "faster and cheaper" with a lot of computer equipment but
it seems that HDDs have really taken a big drop.

I am looking at paying no more than £60 (about $105) for a 160 GB hard
drive from a reputable manufacturer (WD, Seagate, Samsung) including all
taxes.

Have IDE HDD prices fallen more than normal?

Is this because of theintroduction of SATA?

I think it's due to the slow introduction of newer drives at the high end of
the market.

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

I have not been keeping a close watch on the price of IDE hard disks herein
the UK but I took a look at prices recently and they seem to have fallen a
lot.

I know it's all "faster and cheaper" with a lot of computer equipment butit
seems that HDDs have really taken a big drop.

I am looking at paying no more than £60 (about $105) for a 160 GB hard drive
from a reputable manufacturer (WD, Seagate, Samsung) including all taxes.

Have IDE HDD prices fallen more than normal?

Is this because of theintroduction of SATA?

There are many factors. Part of it is that computer sales didn't rise
quite as much as forcast, so there is a bit of oversupply. Also, the
shrinking number, but much bigger, computer system manufacturers (Dell,
HP, etc..) are putting more and more pressure on the drive manufacturers
to cut costs.

 

[David Besack]

Have IDE HDD prices fallen more than normal?

Is this because of theintroduction of SATA?

They were holding at about $1 per GB for a while (little more for smaller
drives), and recently look to be about $0.80 per GB. SATA could be part of
the reason, but even SATA drives went down recently too.

My only complaint about the bigger drives is they don't offer much advantage
in speed. The fact that going from 7200 to 10000 RPM (about a 50% increase
in speed) doubles your sales price is an indication that they've hit a wall.
I don't know what to expect but unless they can up the bus speed (SATA 300
or even 600) and have every drive contain an internal RAID or something
there's not much reason to buy new hard drives these days.

Actually it seems like a lot of component technology is hitting the wall
these days. One exception I think is flash drives. They're up to 2 GB now
(maybe 4 GB). That's pretty impressive considering that 6 years ago you
were lucky if your internal hard drive was that size.

 

[CJT]

They were holding at about $1 per GB for a while (little more for smaller
drives), and recently look to be about $0.80 per GB.

Is that Australian dollars? Lately Fry's seems routinely to have drives
in the U.S. 50 cents/GB ballpark, often without rebates.

SATA could be part of

 

[someone]

I have not been keeping a close watch on the price of IDE hard disks here in
the UK but I took a look at prices recently and they seem to have fallen a
lot.

I know it's all "faster and cheaper" with a lot of computer equipment but it
seems that HDDs have really taken a big drop.

I am looking at paying no more than £60 (about $105) for a 160 GB hard drive
from a reputable manufacturer (WD, Seagate, Samsung) including all taxes.

Have IDE HDD prices fallen more than normal?

Is this because of theintroduction of SATA?

Have you noticed the 40Gb hdd's are getting more difficult to find at the
big box stores and have almost doubled in price to ~$80 USD.

I agree with a comment in the thread - flash memory appears destined to take
over for <5 Gb applications.

 

[Geronimo W. Christ Esq]

My only complaint about the bigger drives is they don't offer much advantage
in speed. The fact that going from 7200 to 10000 RPM (about a 50% increase
in speed) doubles your sales price is an indication that they've hit a wall.
I don't know what to expect but unless they can up the bus speed (SATA 300
or even 600) and have every drive contain an internal RAID or something
there's not much reason to buy new hard drives these days.

Increasing the bus speed isn't useful for a single drive. The fastest
drives in existence barely peak at 100Mb/sec, AFAIR. The bus speed
business is more marketing hype than anything else.

The phrase "internal RAID" is something of an oxymoron. The "A" in RAID
stands for "array" so obviously you've got a collection of disks. The
only form of RAID that theoretically delivers significant performance
improvements is the striped variant, and you pay the price of losing a
lot more data if one drive fails.

Actually it seems like a lot of component technology is hitting the wall
these days. One exception I think is flash drives. They're up to 2 GB now
(maybe 4 GB). That's pretty impressive considering that 6 years ago you
were lucky if your internal hard drive was that size.

It's a question of focus. Hard drives being sold in mass-produced
consumer desktop machines are being sold on size and low price, not on
performance. Disks that are tuned for optimal performance tend to be
sought only by enthusiasts or those building high-end
workstations/low-end servers, thus they are more specialized and more
expensive.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

They were holding at about $1 per GB for a while (little more for smaller
drives), and recently look to be about $0.80 per GB. SATA could be part of
the reason, but even SATA drives went down recently too.

My only complaint about the bigger drives is they don't offer much advantage
in speed. The fact that going from 7200 to 10000 RPM (about a 50% increase
in speed) doubles your sales price is an indication that they've hit a wall.
I don't know what to expect but unless they can up the bus speed (SATA 300
or even 600) and have every drive contain an internal RAID or something
there's not much reason to buy new hard drives these days.

Actually it seems like a lot of component technology is hitting the wall
these days. One exception I think is flash drives. They're up to 2 GB now
(maybe 4 GB).

That's pretty impressive considering that 6 years ago you
were lucky if your internal hard drive was that size.

Try 9-10 years back.

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

Is that Australian dollars? Lately Fry's seems routinely to have drives
in the U.S. 50 cents/GB ballpark, often without rebates.

I just bought a 120G Seagate ST3120026A (8M buffer) from Best Buy.
Price is US$109.99, but there is $50 in rebates. That gives about
$0.50/G.

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

Have you noticed the 40Gb hdd's are getting more difficult to find at the
big box stores and have almost doubled in price to ~$80 USD.

Small capacities are becoming the domain of tiny drives like laptop
2.5" or smaller. The very tiny (under 10G) is turning to Flash.

It's simple supply/demand. Nobody wants only 40G in a 3.5" drive
anymore, so manufacturers are phasing them out. Everybody wants those
monstrous 250G+ things to store all their illegal copies of music,
movies and porn.

 

[Same Guy]

Fri, 17 Sep 2004 11:08:38 -0400: written by "David Besack"

these days. One exception I think is flash drives. They're up to 2 GB now
(maybe 4 GB).

Definitely 4GB. I saw a flyer at work for some place called usbmall.com
that had the 4GB listed.

WAY EXPENSIVE though. They had it for like $800 if I remember
correctly. !?!?! Sorry, I don't need it *that* bad.

 

[Johannes H Andersen]

They were holding at about $1 per GB for a while (little more for smaller
drives), and recently look to be about $0.80 per GB. SATA could be part of
the reason, but even SATA drives went down recently too.

My only complaint about the bigger drives is they don't offer much advantage
in speed. The fact that going from 7200 to 10000 RPM (about a 50% increase
in speed) doubles your sales price is an indication that they've hit a wall.
I don't know what to expect but unless they can up the bus speed (SATA 300
or even 600) and have every drive contain an internal RAID or something
there's not much reason to buy new hard drives these days.

You need a fast drive and you need a large drive, but not necessarily at the
same time. A small fast drive (~40 GB) and a large slower drive will do nicely.
The larger the data volume, the more permanent it tends to be.

Actually it seems like a lot of component technology is hitting the wall
these days. One exception I think is flash drives. They're up to 2 GB now
(maybe 4 GB). That's pretty impressive considering that 6 years ago you
were lucky if your internal hard drive was that size.

Flash and hard drives aren't really in the same business. They only overlap
at the fringe where costs are still high.

 

[TMack]

SNIP!

Please don't crosspost. People replying don't notice and as a result
inappropriate stuff gets posted to some of the groups - e.g. the uk groups
are not really interested in discussions of the price of hard disks and
vendors in the US.

NB - this is deliberately crossposted as per the original as I don't know
which group(s) the OP may be reading to follow this thread.

Tony

 

[J. Clarke]

SNIP!

Please don't crosspost.

Pleas DO crosspost when it is appropriate, which, in this case, it appears
to have been. If he did not crosspost then several different people would
probably waste their time telling him things that someone has already said
adequately because they would not know that he had posted the same question
in multiple places or that it had already been answered.

People replying don't notice and as a result
inappropriate stuff gets posted to some of the groups - e.g. the uk groups
are not really interested in discussions of the price of hard disks and
vendors in the US.

However, since he stated specifically that he is in the UK that concern does
not apply now, does it? What do you do, look for crossposting and whine
before you read the content?

 

[Johannes H Andersen]

Pleas DO crosspost when it is appropriate, which, in this case, it appears
to have been. If he did not crosspost then several different people would
probably waste their time telling him things that someone has already said
adequately because they would not know that he had posted the same question
in multiple places or that it had already been answered.

Everybody have their own opinion about cross posting. Personally, I hate it
since it is usually used for broadcasting rather than intelligent discussion.
Typically, the OP 'hit and run', i.e. never enter the subsequent discussion.

 

[David Maynard]

Hmmm - Thats an interesting comment.

If the size of affordable flash memory catches up with the minimum sizeof
an installed OS,
you could put you OS on a flash drive and data on an IDE dirves. Instant on!
and fast!
Anbody doing this yet?

Flash drives are not quite as fast as you may think.

Here's a place that has flash drives large enough...

http://www.dpie.com/storage/at2550.html

Note the Read Transfer Rate is 9.5 MBytes/sec, sustained. That doesn't
compare real well to the sustained read rate of modern hard drives.

What does compare very well is the almost 0, specifically .1ms, 'seek'
times as there's nothing mechanical to move around 'seeking'.

 

[Terry Wilson]

here but

Have you noticed the 40Gb hdd's are getting more difficult to find at the
big box stores and have almost doubled in price to ~$80 USD.

I agree with a comment in the thread - flash memory appears destined to take
over for <5 Gb applications.

Hmmm - Thats an interesting comment.

If the size of affordable flash memory catches up with the minimum size of
an installed OS,
you could put you OS on a flash drive and data on an IDE dirves. Instant on!
and fast!
Anbody doing this yet?

 

[Mike Redrobe]

Flash drives are not quite as fast as you may think.

Here's a place that has flash drives large enough...

http://www.dpie.com/storage/at2550.html

Note the Read Transfer Rate is 9.5 MBytes/sec, sustained. That doesn't
compare real well to the sustained read rate of modern hard drives.

What does compare very well is the almost 0, specifically .1ms, 'seek'
times as there's nothing mechanical to move around 'seeking'.

...and the lack of any noise whatsoever, and much more resistant to
physical shock.

Remember flash memory has limited write-cycles though, so its not suitable
for your page file !

CF-IDE adaptors are cheap, then just choose the size of CompactFlash
card required.

 

[J. Clarke]

Everybody have their own opinion about cross posting. Personally, I hate
it since it is usually used for broadcasting rather than intelligent
discussion. Typically, the OP 'hit and run', i.e. never enter the
subsequent discussion.

Crossposting is a tool, like any other tool, and can be used properly or
improperly. Railing at those who use it properly does not serve any
purpose other than creating the kind of crossposted disturbance that you
were seeking to avoid.

 

[David Maynard]

..and the lack of any noise whatsoever, and much more resistant to
physical shock.

True, and nice features, but not very relevant to the poster's comment
about "Instant on! and fast!"