Western Digital 100GB $69.99 AR Circuit City 4/13

[Armoth]

Perhaps we could PM to CC from somewhere else?

 

[huesmann]

Originally posted by: toant103
i have 120GB and 80GB brand new. Still in the box. It's so cheap so i bought it but i have no use for it.

Fill it up with pr0n! 😀

 

[Mac]

zParticle wrote:

I've never purchased an IDE drive for myself before--I've run an exclusive SCSI shop since the mid-80's.

Welcome to the unwashed masses.

However, comparing these IDE prices to the current fast SCSI drives ($8/GB for 15k.3's) has inspired me to build a low-speed server for multimedia data.

"Inspired"... Is this an apology or a rationalization? You mean you're ready to go cheap. Right? 😉

Even at .70/GB after rebate, is this as good as it gets? Ideally, I'd like to find a larger drive in this price range--rebates are ok.

This is pretty decent. But best deal I found was the recent WD 175GB 7200RPM for $100 after $100 rebate at CompUSA's anniversary sale. The drive was actually 180GB and came with an ATA-100 PCI card to boot.

What are some of the best IDE deals that you've seen this year? Any great deals on the largest drives?

Generally, the super high capacity drives (160GB and up) still command a premium due to the value of having that much capacity on a single spindle. I think the best deals currently are for the 120GB 7200 RPM drives which seem to be popping up with regularity between $80-$90 AR.

For performance, I'll stick with SCSI. If I'm optimizing for capacity and not speed, are there any other considerations besides finding the largest drives I can?

No argument re performance but the degree of benefit just isn't there anymore unless you have unique application requirements (ie.,digital editing) or running a mission critical server where high availability and performance are paramount.

Ideally, I'd like to stick with the 120GB-200GB drives, for possible use in a future RAID0/RAID5 array with other drives of the same size. Or are there IDE RAID controllers that can handle mixed drive sizes?

I am not aware of any IDE RAID controller that supports RAID5. Doesn't fit cleanly with the IDE spec which is two drives per channel. If redundancy is important, then you want an RAID controller that supports either RAID 1 or RAID 0+1. Be sure your IDE RAID card/controller supports striping large enough to combine both drives into a single volume. And yes, ideally, the drives should be the same size...same rules as when creating volumes with SCSI RAIDS.

Please overlook my initial sarcasm but you see, I am a recovering SCSI-aholic. I have known about every type of SCSI there is...SCSI narrow, LVD, Ultra SCSI, FW (I really liked fast and wide scuzzy girls...oops...wrong type of SCSI). In fact I am preparing to sell all my SCSI gear on Ebay with the exception of a single controller card for a high-end scanner that my wife uses.

Hopes this helps and gave you a chuckle. 😉

 

[zParticle]

Thanks for a very helpful reply, Mac!

"Inspired"... Is this an apology or a rationalization? You mean you're ready to go cheap. Right? 😉

I had a moment of sanity recently when I dropped $325 on a 36GB SCSI drive and was greatly tempted to double it and get the 72GB version for $650. Then I remembered seeing all of the IDE drives in here and figured I that for the money I could get 10X the storage capacity if I'd relax my standards a bit and take a different approach.

See, a home file server can have almost exactly the opposite performance requirements of your typical server for a business workgroup. Instead of storing all data on a common server with high availability requirements, you can use a slower server box to offload infrequently-used data in a sort of near-line storage system. Since it will seldom have more than one simultaneous user, at 100Base-T speeds the bottleneck gets shifted from the hard drive to the network connection.

For my use, this would be the ideal place to dump multimedia files, which are commanding a huge and increasing percentage of my total storage capacity, but don't require much bandwidth for playback (at LAN speeds). Also, just having hundreds of gigabytes available online/nearline is so much more convenient that having them offline on removable media.

Welcome to the unwashed masses.

Thanks. Bathing can be such a chore. 😛

Generally, the super high capacity drives (160GB and up) still command a premium due to the value of having that much capacity on a single spindle. I think the best deals currently are for the 120GB 7200 RPM drives which seem to be popping up with regularity between $80-$90 AR.

Good info, thanks.

No argument re performance but the degree of benefit just isn't there anymore unless you have unique application requirements(ie.,digital editing) or running a mission critical server where high availability and performance are paramount.

For the typical business applications, I would agree: I certainly don't push SCSI on my clients for their standard workstations.

But I can't agree on the degree of benefit--I have a pretty good A to B to B to B comparison going since I come home to SCSI after working with IDE drives during the day, and it's always a breath of fresh air--even coming off of working on the very latest systems---the hard drive is the bottleneck on modern systems, and cutting that bottleneck in half to a fourth just makes everything more zippy.

I don't know about you, but I certainly don't intend to go back to a dialup internet connection any time soon. 😉

Please overlook my initial sarcasm but you see, I am a recovering SCSI-aholic. I have known about every type of SCSI there is...SCSI narrow, LVD, Ultra SCSI, FW (I really liked fast and wide scuzzy girls...oops...wrong type of SCSI).

Heh. Perhaps this explains the paper bag over your head? Here's hoping I've done my part to nudge you back off the wagon.

In fact I am preparing to sell all my SCSI gear on Ebay with the exception of a single controller card for a high-end scanner that my wife uses.

Aww. But of that lot, how many boxes of 25-pin SCSI cables and adapters do YOU have? 😛

Hopes this helps and gave you a chuckle. 😉

Indeed, on both counts. Thanks again, Mac!

zParticle

 

[Tung]

any chance of getting the extra 20gb?

 

[Balthazar]

Originally posted by: samyboy
Yes. WD1000BBRTL is a 2MB version. These are kinda un-cool these days ( against 8MB drives )

Quite on the contrary, my ReplayTV loves a 2MB cache drive. the 8MB cache drive makes absolutely NO difference. Heck I wish I could find a 2MB cache 5400RPM drive.

 

[CZroe]

I intend to trade this back to a friend for his 100GB WDSE drive I sold him NEW (At a HUGE loss)

 

[nightowl]

Z,

Both 3Ware and Promise make IDE RAID 5 PCI cards starting off in the $200-$300 range. These cards have dedicated processors to handle the parity calculations for RAID 5 (All of the cheap IDE "RAID" cards lack this). Also, for RAID 5 you will need at least 3 drives of the same capacity and preferably the same model. This will maximize performance of the array. Also, with the array you will lose the equivalent space of 1 drive to handle the parity information. I am not aware of any IDE or SCSI controllers that will support RAID 5 with drives of unlike sizes.

 

[CZroe]

The Promise one is a little cheaper 😉 (I've been looking into it too!)

I'm planning on using that on my 3 WD 100GBSE drives even though I don't have 66MHz PCI slots 😉