Serial ATA may be the interface of today, but SATA II/SATA 3.0 Gb/sec./SATA II (S2 in our charts) is the future, and the latest drive models are certainly making use of the new standard. Features such as NCQ and a higher overall data 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. As Serial ATA drives are a newer technology, these are decidedly high-end, even at the entry-level, sporting 8MB of cache and 7200 RPM speeds as the base minimum. Our SATA hard drive price list features entries for drives, prices and price changes, and columns for $/GB (cost per GB) and model number.
The PATA chart showed some definite price movement, but Serial ATA hard drives were even more active over the last month. The SATA chart showed eight double-digit price cuts (compared to only four on the PATA list), and the aggregate chart drop of $191 almost doubled that of the PATA drives as well. In terms of individual price drops, the Maxtor DiamondMax 11 500GB fell by $30, the Seagate 500GB NCQ model dropped $21, while the Hitachi 400GB received a $17 price cut. As with the Parallel ATA chart, there is very little upward price movement, and the Serial ATA listing does even better with the largest price increase being only $4.
RSS feed
Sitemap
Comment and Contribute
