Anything on the radar?

[gwai lo]

Planning on system upgrade when M2 is released, should be about the sametime I head off for college. At least I hope so..boo for delays.

Anyway, I just noticed how my current hard drive capacity is getting a little tight. So I figured that I'd start with the very first part around November (Black Friday anyone?), or sooner if I see a really killer deal. But I don't want to buy a hard drive now, and then find out there's something else being released at around the time I pick up the rest of my parts. =/

I know no one really knows for sure about this stuff, but I figured you guys would have a better idea than I would.

Thanks



edit: oh yeah...this wasn't all that easy to search for..but if there has been a recent thread on this..then...uhm...crap

 

[DougLite]

*looks into his crystal ball*
Unfortunately, the days of gang buster hard drive density and performance increases are over. The makers have resorted to huge price cuts to try and distinquish their products. Virtually every ATA drive on the market is pretty much inaudible at idle thanks to FDB motors, performance is really close (although makers that implement a 16MB buffer have an advantage), and it is really difficult to get more increases in platter density and seek performance without compromising on heat, noise, and reliability. It's a really tight balancing act, and all of the giants of the industry have had a great deal of difficulty getting to the 100-133GB platter plateau. Perpindicular recording will need to be perfected, as well as read/write heads to manipulate the data on PMR platters, before we see significant advaces again.

There will be DiamondMax11 (and presumably MaxLineIV) by the tiem you build your new rig, and the 500GB Barracuda may be around by then, but I don't anticipate them being performance blockbusters. 166GB platters will be very hard to get high seek performance on.

There is scuttlebutt about a new Raptor with double the platter density (70-80GB platters) with next generation SATA features coming soon, but that is nothing more than rumor at this point. That's the only real shakeup I can see in the hard drive world I can foresee in your time frame. *crystal ball fades out*

 

[gwai lo]

meh..raptors...meh...more SATA features

looks pretty cool

now...time to keep an eye out for some 250 gig SATA drives...

thanks doug

 

[Lazn_Work]

Price will go down.

That is about it for a while.

==>Lazn

 

[DougLite]

I don't know how much lower the prices can go. It's impossible to drive the price much below $50 for a 3.5" drive without compromising on reliability. Adding an extra platter and pair of read/write heads is going to drive that to around $75-80. Will we see 250GB drives fall all the way to $90 in six months? My jaw would be even closer to the floor than the price if that happens.

 

[unhappy_mage]

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=100718-5

Getting pretty close already... $104 for a Maxtor 250, or $108 for the ML3. That's about 15% or 20% above your target...

 

[Lazn_Work]

I don't know how much lower the prices can go. It's impossible to drive the price much below $50 for a 3.5" drive without compromising on reliability. Adding an extra platter and pair of read/write heads is going to drive that to around $75-80. Will we see 250GB drives fall all the way to $90 in six months? My jaw would be even closer to the floor than the price if that happens.

Perhaps I should have said you will get more GB/$ than prices will go down, because they are not really the same thing.

bigger drives will get cheaper, the smaller ones will stay close to the same.

==>Lazn

 

[DougLite]

Once one of the makers decides to price SATA drives based on their cost to produce rather than basing price on performance, 250GB flagship drives should fall below $100. 400GB drives should be well below $200. That's amazing when you figure that a year ago, a Hitachi 7K400 commanded well over $300.