I've got the OEM 160GB Maxtor 8MB cache drive, which I got from Newegg for
about $125 delivered. It works great however the bios (1014) of the P4P800D
fails to recognize it as a UDMA-6 device and is running it at 133Mhz rather
than 150. I suspect that Asus or AMI are responsibile for this and not
Maxtor, as reviews of this drive make no mention of this problem.
Personally, I've avoided Hitachi drives because I'm assuming there is some
of the risk from the old IBM drives whose facilities they operate now; the
IBM drives, officially named "Deskstar," got the unfortunate name of
"Deathstar" due to a high failure rate. Hopefully Hitachi has sorted all
that out.
You should note that you might need a right angle SATA drive connector in
order to close your computer case with a SATA drive in a drive bay, of
course depending on the configuration of your case. Or, if you have some
spare drive rails lying around, and an extra 5.5" bay in your box, you could
relocate it up there which is what I did with mine. I don't know the bios
of your board but you will find that the SATA drive is not initially
accepted by your bios as the boot drive; you will need to manually configure
that yourself. One other thing you might need, if your power supply does
not have this, is a SATA drive power connector. The current crop of SATA
drives usually has both the old (PATA) power connector and the new SATA
power connector, but if not on the drive you buy, you may have to buy an
adapter depending on your power supply. This adapter, that is worth about
$2 if you look at it, can be expensive. The same is true of the right angle
SATA connectors. Before you buy an "OEM" drive to save a few bucks, be sure
you don't need these connectors because it is possible you might find a
"kit" with these things in it for not much more, and if you have to buy them
individually your savings might evaporate. Of course, I don't know if any
of the kits have right angle connectors, you'd have to check that out.
good luck,
ken
