250GB Hard Drive $99.99 No REBATES!

[Dean]

This is a rocking deal, and best of all NO REBATES!

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus
7200RPM
16MB Cache
<=9.3 ms
Ultra ATA/133
1Yr Warranty

$99.99

CompUSA SKU 316138
They have about 40 left at the moment, but they may be in back so ASK!

[ShawnS]

Damn, wish I had some extra skrilla.

[BOO]

Ok Here I go with the Questions.. lol


Is that for DT's vs LT's ??

[Dean]

DTs that support large drives, or you can get a controller cheap. You could also get a USB case for it for $29 at CUSA or less on the web. in which case it will work on anything.

[BOO]

Cool .. Thanks for the Info. Dean

[JoeCool]

1 year warranty.

It is a good deal, but I'm not in on that warranty. I've already had too many drives fail to not get at least 3 years. Seagate offers 5 years on their drives, so that's probably what I'm getting from this point forward.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by JoeCool

1 year warranty.

It is a good deal, but I'm not in on that warranty. I've already had too many drives fail to not get at least 3 years. Seagate offers 5 years on their drives, so that's probably what I'm getting from this point forward.

Every drive I've purchased in the last 2 years or so have been Seagates.

Barracuda > *!

[Dean]

Originally Posted by sperry

Every drive I've purchased in the last 2 years or so have been Seagates.

Barracuda > *!

They all pretty much come off the same assembly line these days. Our outrageously expensive U320 15K SCSI drives don't last any longer than most household IDEs if used in the same manner. Left running 7x24 from the moment they are new. They either fail or not in the first couple months. After that, they last about 3-5 years, or until you DBAN them and throw them away.

And my thought on warranty is that if it doesn't fail in the first year, I most likely don't want a replacement anyway! 18 months ago, a 80GB drive was $99. 18 months from now, a 500GB drive will be $99. Or something like that. I sure don't want a replacement 2.1-8GB drive from 3-5 years ago.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by Dean

They all pretty much come off the same assembly line these days. Our outrageously expensive U320 15K SCSI drives don't last any longer than most household IDEs if used in the same manner. Left running 7x24 from the moment they are new. They either fail or not in the first couple months. After that, they last about 3-5 years, or until you DBAN them and throw them away.

And my thought on warranty is that if it doesn't fail in the first year, I most likely don't want a replacement anyway! 18 months ago, a 80GB drive was $99. 18 months from now, a 500GB drive will be $99. Or something like that. I sure don't want a replacement 2.1-8GB drive from 3-5 years ago.

Sure, but something tells me that $99 250GB drive isn't anywhere near as quiet and as fast as my 3 Barracudas. Drive noise is an underrated feature. With the drives I've got, I can run two computers at my feet that are quieter than my roommate's computer that's in the next room.

[Dean]

Originally Posted by sperry

something tells me that $99 250GB drive isn't anywhere near as quiet and as fast as my 3 Barracudas. Drive noise is an underrated feature. With the drives I've got, I can run two computers at my feet that are quieter than my roommate's computer that's in the next room.

OK, how did we get on quiet? $ vs. warranty... Oh well.

PC noise is mostly case design and fans, not HD. HD noise is pretty similar for a given RPM, and number of heads and form factor I believe. Want a quiet PC, spend money on good fans, and a case where the moving parts are in no way attached to the exterior portions of the case turning them into resonators. Also, put sound deadening foam on any internal surface you can. If you can somehow foam or rubber isolate drives and fans, the better. TechTV did a real good ultra quiet PC a year or so ago.

Back on HDs. I'm not sure your Barcuda is all the Scnizzle...

It may be good, but there are a bunch of faster SATA drives, and even one WD ATA/100 drive in most tests, including the gaming one. Not sure which model the 250s are, but since they are not SATA, they probably aren't super fast, but that is not why I mentioned them. Large capacity, cheap Yo.

Check out the facts at StorageReview.com Benchmarks

Don't make me bring all my 87% nerdyness down on you...

[sperry]

Originally Posted by Dean

OK, how did we get on quiet? $ vs. warranty... Oh well.

PC noise is mostly case design and fans, not HD. HD noise is pretty similar for a given RPM, and number of heads and form factor I believe. Want a quiet PC, spend money on good fans, and a case where the moving parts are in no way attached to the exterior portions of the case turning them into resonators. Also, put sound deadening foam on any internal surface you can. If you can somehow foam or rubber isolate drives and fans, the better. TechTV did a real good ultra quiet PC a year or so ago.

Back on HDs. I'm not sure your Barcuda is all the Scnizzle...

It may be good, but there are a bunch of faster SATA drives, and even one WD ATA/100 drive in most tests, including the gaming one. Not sure which model the 250s are, but since they are not SATA, they probably aren't super fast, but that is not why I mentioned them. Large capacity, cheap Yo.

Check out the facts at StorageReview.com Benchmarks

Don't make me bring all my 87% nerdyness down on you...

Ugh.. everything's a Federal Case w/ you isn't it.

We got on "quiet" because I brought it up. A large/cheap drive isn't going to perform as well acoustically as a more expensive drive... my point is that noise isn't usually a commented on feature.

As far as quiet PC's... I've got two that you can barely hear from about 2 feet away: Antec Sonata quiet PC cases, 180mm throttled case fans, throttling PCU fans, throttled low-speed CPU fans (one's actually a heat-pipe setup), two stage video card replacement fans, isolated hard drive enclosures, and to top it off, low noise hard drives: Seagate Barracuda 7200.7's. Sure they're not the biggest, or the absolute fastest, but they're *very* quick for the price, and damn near silent.

[tysonK]

I still gotta buy ones of those quiet cases and a couple windmill fans for my compy. 1.4 Gz, 12GB, 512ram beast.

sweet!

[Dean]

Originally Posted by sperry

Ugh.. everything's a Federal Case w/ you isn't it.

We got on "quiet" because I brought it up. A large/cheap drive isn't going to perform as well acoustically as a more expensive drive... my point is that noise isn't usually a commented on feature.

As far as quiet PC's... I've got two that you can barely hear from about 2 feet away: Antec Sonata quiet PC cases, 180mm throttled case fans, throttling PCU fans, throttled low-speed CPU fans (one's actually a heat-pipe setup), two stage video card replacement fans, isolated hard drive enclosures, and to top it off, low noise hard drives: Seagate Barracuda 7200.7's. Sure they're not the biggest, or the absolute fastest, but they're *very* quick for the price, and damn near silent.

Yes!

Your case and fans are exactly what I was describing. I'd like to check them out some time. The last couple cases I have bought have been either monster server cases, or el cheapo mini towers that vibrate like the dickens.

I just don't think different drives are significantly different in design for noise purposes. More heads = more noise. Noise: 15KRPM > 10K > 7.200 > 5.400... A very expensive top of the line 15,000RPM drive with only 18GB will out noise any 300GB 7200RPM drive. I am sure your Baracudas are quiet, but it is probably not cost related is all I'm saying. I agree it is not a subject they pay much attention to though.

[JoelK]

Back on warranty....

I guess it depends on your perspective. I just had a 120GB 7200rpm drive fail that I purchased 1.8 years ago (got it for $125 shipped), and I believed I had a 3 year warranty (Western Digital SE drive). Come to find out, WD wouldn't honor the warranty because it was sold as a "Dell drive" and Dell only provided a 1 year warranty. So I ended up dropping $100 on a 160 7200rpm Seagate that i _knew_ had a 5 year warranty... and deciding never to buy WD again.

For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure I'll be able to find a use for a 100+ GB drive 3 years from now. Then again, I have 5 computers (could probably dredge that up to 7 or 8 if I wanted to put the parts together from older stuff)... so don't make me lay down my 99% geekiness here.

Oh, one other thought... if, 4.5 years down the line, Seagate is out of xxxGB drives, they'll replace your drive with >xxxGB drive.

I'm personally holding out for a Seagate 250GB drive for $100 out the door. I figure that will probably happen within the next 2-3 months.

[Dean]

It is funny how drive manufaturers eb and flow. Back in the days of 45 MEGABYTE hard drives, Seagate was just short of going under due to some huge QA & design issues. Quantum was the ruler then for some time. Then WD took over the Desktop world, followed by IBM, and then Maxtor came out of nowhere and swallowed up Quantum. Now it is kind of a crap shoot.

Seagate owns the SCSI world for the most part, though Fujitsu and recently Maxtor/Quantum is getting back in the game. WD embraced SATA first, and holds a commanding lead in performance SATA. Maxtor largely owns the retail consumer market. Hitachi, formerly IBM is making a run at them though.

All this says it is still a very competitive market where we all win. I remember paying about $500 for a used 5 MB 5.25 full height external hard drive for my Apple II+ about 25 or so odd years ago... Man I'm old...

[sperry]

Originally Posted by Dean

It is funny how drive manufaturers eb and flow. Back in the days of 45 MEGABYTE hard drives, Seagate was just short of going under due to some huge QA & design issues. Quantum was the ruler then for some time. Then WD took over the Desktop world, followed by IBM, and then Maxtor came out of nowhere and swallowed up Quantum. Now it is kind of a crap shoot.

Seagate owns the SCSI world for the most part, though Fujitsu and recently Maxtor/Quantum is getting back in the game. WD embraced SATA first, and holds a commanding lead in performance SATA. Maxtor largely owns the retail consumer market. Hitachi, formerly IBM is making a run at them though.

All this says it is still a very competitive market where we all win. I remember paying about $500 for a used 5 MB 5.25 full height external hard drive for my Apple II+ about 25 or so odd years ago... Man I'm old...

I'm not sure how true all this is still, but just a few months ago, I believe that Seagate was one of the few manufacturers that were building true SATA drives... the rest were all ATA drives with a SATA bridge. The difference being, those bridged drives can't pipeline commands like a true SATA drive can (providing you have the proper SATA controller... most don't pipeline yet... at least none of the onboard SATA controllers for the MB's I was looking at 2 months ago).

The real performance benefits from SATA don't come through bandwidth, they come from the interface being allowed to re-organize commands for efficiency. While this won't make huge gains on your everyday machine, it will *rock* on file and web servers, and make SATA a true contender for usurping SCSI.

And back on Seagate... the nice thing about them is that a lot of the high-end SCSI design makes it into their S/ATA drives as well. The ATA Barracuda IV had all the same liquid damped ball bearing what's-it-magiggers in there... plus if you got the 40GB single platter drive, it was damn near silent and vibration free. Lots of recording studio guys would use those in their gear because of how quiet they were. The successors, the Barracuda V and 7200.7 aren't quite as quiet, but they're close, and available in much larger sizes.

And I too remember a day when it was WD or you were a retard. Back in the 6.4GB era, they couldn't be beat, and their warranty lasted forever. I think I've had 8 or 9 of those drives, and they all had uptime in years. 'Course today, I wouldn't put a WD drive in my mom's computer.

[Dean]

Originally Posted by sperry

I'm not sure how true all this is still, but just a few months ago, I believe that Seagate was one of the few manufacturers that were building true SATA drives... the rest were all ATA drives with a SATA bridge. The difference being, those bridged drives can't pipeline commands like a true SATA drive can (providing you have the proper SATA controller... most don't pipeline yet... at least none of the onboard SATA controllers for the MB's I was looking at 2 months ago).

The real performance benefits from SATA don't come through bandwidth, they come from the interface being allowed to re-organize commands for efficiency. While this won't make huge gains on your everyday machine, it will *rock* on file and web servers, and make SATA a true contender for usurping SCSI.

I've spent little time researching SATA 'cause nothing I have uses them. My WD comment was based on the StoageReview.com performance numbers I looked at yesterday and a couple articles i scanned on them. The WD Raptor SATA drives are at the top of the performance charts in almost every test, beating out many of the High end SCSI drives.

And just for you Scott, they do a idle noise test... The Baracudas Did well except the 160Gb SCSI. Check out the Idle noise comparison... They also did temp tests which would impact how fast your fans have to run.

You mentioned your fans are throttled... Is that manual, or heat controlled?

[sperry]

Originally Posted by Dean

I've spent little time researching SATA 'cause nothing I have uses them. My WD comment was based on the StoageReview.com performance numbers I looked at yesterday and a couple articles i scanned on them. The WD Raptor SATA drives are at the top of the performance charts in almost every test, beating out many of the High end SCSI drives.

And just for you Scott, they do a idle noise test... The Baracudas Did well except the 160Gb SCSI. Check out the Idle noise comparison... They also did temp tests which would impact how fast your fans have to run.

You mentioned your fans are throttled... Is that manual, or heat controlled?

WD might have started building true SATA drives... at least I would hope they are by now! I'm sure they're fast, but I'm still suspect on quality, as I've seen nothing but issues on WD drives made in the last year or two... my roommate's had 4... He bought 2 identicle drives... one failed, and was replaced by a 2nd under warranty that failed, followed by a third. Around then the 2nd drive of the original purchase also failed. He just tossed 'em and said "fuck the warranty"... it wasn't worth all his time and money for shipping... just easier to pick up a pair of Maxtors.

And I think that 160GB SCSI is like a 4 platter drive! No wonder it's loud!

Regarding fan control: both Antec cases have a heat monitor in the PSU. The case fans are automatically throttled by the special fan only power connectors according to temp in the PSU and power load. So if your stepping processor kick up, and the video card starts drawing a butt load of power for 3D gaming, then the case fans throttle up. I've installed two 180mm fans in the cases, but ended up disconnecting one, since it wasn't needed... the single, giant exhaust fan doesn't even need to kick up to high speeds! Also, the PSU's own fan is throttled by this same mechanism.

On my newer PC, the MB has auto-throttled fan headers, so my cooling tower (heat-pipe w/ a 100mm IIRC fan) is throttled by the MB. On my older PC, the MB doesn't control the CPU fan, so I have a manual throttle controller installed. Since that system is a file server, I can run the rpms pretty low... basically I run the fan as fast as possible w/o any whine.

In both systems, I removed the heatsink/fans from my video cards (which are some of the noisiest fans in the system because they're small and fast). I installed a larger fan unit that takes up the next slot over from the video card and vents out the back of the case. The fans are two speed units that throttle based on temperature.

So, that's a total of 4 fans in each case... 1 100mm PSU fan, 1 180mm Case fan, 1 CPU cooler, 1 video card cooler. All throttleable via some method.

/geek

[MikeSTI]

carry on

[ScottyS]

I second the in regards to recent manufacture WD drives. I've had 2 die on me within the last 2 years, and heard about plenty more problems. I ran Maxtors until about a year ago when I found Samsungs. While I still keep a couple ultra-thin Maxtors in a RAID 0 config off of a PCI ATA-133 card (for Premiere to scratch), I now run Samsung SATA's in RAID 1 on a 64bit-66mhz card for general storage. They are pretty darn quiet. I've got manual control of all fans in the case (5 case, 2 CPU, 1 Vid, 2 PSU, 1 NB), so I can back it off and get nothing but drive noise. The older WD 60BB that I still run my OS on is the noisiest of the bunch, followed by the Maxtor DX9s, followed by a WD 80JB, followed by the Samsung 160's. A 3-year warranty on the Samsungs for the same price as the other brands, plus decent reviews, sold me. In a RAID 1 config they are still almost as fast as the older Maxtors on RAID 0, but I suspect the interface speed has a lot to do with it. I'd like to run my OS on a Raptor, but just can't justify it yet.

[soggynoodles]

Are there any left?? I might ask Aaron to get me one while he's up there but don't say anything to Aaron. shhh

[sybir]

Originally Posted by soggynoodles

Are there any left?? I might ask Aaron to get me one while he's up there but don't say anything to Aaron. shhh

Uhhh.
Smooth move, ex-lax.

You want me to buy one, I need cash
And, we have a CompUSA here, so wtf are you on about? Matt used to work there, fer chrissakes.

[soggynoodles]

Originally Posted by sybir

Uhhh.
Smooth move, ex-lax.

You want me to buy one, I need cash
And, we have a CompUSA here, so wtf are you on about? Matt used to work there, fer chrissakes.