Serial ATA may be the interface of today, but SATA II/SATA 3.0 Gb/sec. is the future, and the latest drive models are certainly making use of the new standard. Features such as NCQ and a higher overall bandwidth really help take some SATA drives to a higher performance plane. For our selected brands and sizes, we've gone the same route as with our PATA list, and included everything from a standard 80GB model, to the top-of-the-line 500GB monstrosities and WD Raptor 10K RPM speed demons. The number of PATA drives may slightly outnumber the SATA selection, but Serial ATA drives are decidedly high-end, even at the entry-level, will sport 8MB of cache and 7200 RPM speeds. Our SATA hard drive price list features entries for drives, prices and price changes, and columns for $/GB (cost per GB) and model number.
With the PATA hard drive list showing rising prices, we're looking at the SATA crop for some relief. We do get some, but with a total chart drop of only $19, it's definitely limited in nature. The big news was another nice cut to the Seagate 500GB model, this time it fell by $31, but that was the only double-digit drop of the month. This was not true at the other end of the scale, as both the Seagate 160GB and Hitachi 500GB models jumped by $10. Overall, it seems that the increased holiday demand for hardware has really caught up to the supply side of the equation, and higher prices and lower availability are the end result.
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