Seagate Consellation es.3 3tb - $164 at TigerDirect

[Stoneburner]

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...o=8313030&Sku=

This appears to be a good deal. Usually it's over $200 and this appears to have good reliability.

PLease see tasukete's note below. This is a SAS drive, not SATA.

 

[tasukete]

Wow, that is a great, great deal. I used to work for a big storage vendor that was involved in the pre-production of the ES.3 drive. It contains a ton of very impressive reliability features (which I'm probably not allowed to disclose), but they were sorely needed because the original Constellation ES and its mechanical predecessor, the Barracuda 7200.11, failed like crazy -- the kind of crazy that drops jaws and ends careers. Seagate had to get this drive right and they more or less nailed it. But only time will tell for sure when it comes to failure rates.

Big pluses:

- It's an enterprise drive, manufactured to better tolerances than consumer drives
- It's true 512N (512-byte sectors), perhaps one of the last we'll see at this capacity.
- Going prices seem to be around $250, which is historically about right

Big caveat:

- This is a SAS drive, not SATA.

 

[Replay]

$164.97, and so it qualifies for the new $25 off $100 rebate for clearance items.

No need for it, so I'm looking for something else to use with that rebate.

 

[bbhaag]

I had to Google what a SAS drive was. I learned something new tonight.

 

[BenJeremy]

Yeah, SAS drives cannot be plugged into SATA controllers, but SATA2 or SATA3 drives can be plugged into SAS controllers.

Don't expect to use this drive on your desktop without a $100+ SAS RAID card.

 

[Stoneburner]

These work perfectly for me because I was going to buy a raid card to update my WHS. From what tasukete says and what online reviews tend to harp on indicate these are very reliable drives.

I just bought 4, will put them in raid 5 or raid 6.

 

[dealguru]

Yikes, currently out of stock???