Western Digital 250GB Internal Hard Drive $79.99 After MIR

Roboctor said:
what's wrong with IDE?
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Not a damn thing if its going to be your vault.

and lets face it, a drive this big isn't going to be your primary anyway.
 
He means if your going to use it for seldom acessed large files. Like movies, mp3's, disk images, stuff like that.
I was thinking about getting one to replace the 80GB that's in my external, but I was hoping for a better warrenty. I've been bit by the 2 week over warrenty and die bug before.
 
only stupid people would suggest that IDE is "too old" like 2 previous posters. If you think SATA makes a big difference, you are sadly mistaken.
 
Cyraxx said:
only stupid people would suggest that IDE is "too old" like 2 previous posters. If you think SATA makes a big difference, you are sadly mistaken.
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Its not the performance difference that makes the difference. Its the fact that most boards only support two IDE channels and IDE cables take up more room. SATA drives are also hot swappable.
 
yeah all my IDE cables are already in use.. plus i have a scsi drive.

if i get another drive its gonna have to be SATA. great deal though.. if i didn't get a 200gig western digital for $50 (AR .. and i did receive the rebates) i would have gotten this.
 
Cyraxx said:
only stupid people would suggest that IDE is "too old" like 2 previous posters. If you think SATA makes a big difference, you are sadly mistaken.
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I think that you need to re-think that.

My motherboard is an ABIT IC-7 MAX3. It has 6 SATA ports and 2 different RAID controlers onboard. With a 2 Channel IDE Controler. That's a total of 10 drives, not counting the 2 floppy drives.
And I've got the numbers that PROVE that a pair of SATA RAPTORS in RAID0 array will bust the ASS of a pair of WD IDE Caviar Drives in RAID0 on a Promise FastTrax controler. That'd be 89Gb/sec to 40Gb/sec. I've got the Promise setup in the wife's computer :D .
In fact I know of a guy that got 150Gb/sec off of 4 SATA RAPTORS in a 4 way RAID0 Array. I think he's got a special RAID controler, not an intergrated one though.

What it boils down to is what you've got onboard, SATA or IDE, and what you're going to do with it.

If I could afford it, I'd grab 6 of those and build a server like IDvsEGO did in the HTPC threads. Just for the capacity, not the speed.
Now my main computer has 2 SATA 34Gb RAPTORS in a RAID0 Array as my working drive and 2 WD 160Gb SATA 7200rpm Drives in RAID0 Array as my D:\ drive. And the IDE channels are dedicated to the DVD-ROM on IDE-0 and the DVD Burner on IDE-1, that way I can copy at full speed. The IDE controler will limit your transfer rate if both drives are on the same channel.

And remember IDE hard drives are going the way of the LS-120 drive and the dot matrix printer. :eek:
 
For $79 this drive is more than adequate for bulk movie storage/access imho. Heck a person can have their dream of 1 TB storage for a little over $300 (though i would only buy one due to the shorter warranty).

Nothing to sneeze at :)
 
Cyraxx said:
only stupid people would suggest that IDE is "too old" like 2 previous posters. If you think SATA makes a big difference, you are sadly mistaken.
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It does when I'm cabling 8-10 drives. Especially since they're all on individual controllers.
 
rodsfree said:
And I've got the numbers that PROVE that a pair of SATA RAPTORS in RAID0 array will bust the ASS of a pair of WD IDE Caviar Drives in RAID0 on a Promise FastTrax controler.
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No shit sherlock. Raptors are 10,000 rpm drives. IDE Caviars are 7200 rpm drives.
:rolleyes:

You are also using vastly different raid controllers. That alone makes your conclusion that "OMFG SATA IS TEH WINNAR!!!!" invalid.

The speed difference you see is because of the SATA drives you are comparing spin at a MUCH higher rpm.
 
Brad4321 said:
How exactly would this work? The rebate forum specifically states a circuit city receipt and you are mailing to to circuit city.
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You get Circuit City to pricematch Sam's club's price. So yeah this is an ULTRA HAWT deal.

Edit: Just tried this at the store here in Amarillo, no go with the Associate I talked to. However, you could just go buy the drive at Sam's and use the MFR rebate and get it for like $63. According to the sales guy at CC he said they do not match Sam's club. So YMMV with the CC pricematch.
 
Magic H8 Ball said:
No shit sherlock. Raptors are 10,000 rpm drives. IDE Caviars are 7200 rpm drives.
:rolleyes:

You are also using vastly different raid controllers. That alone makes your conclusion that "OMFG SATA IS TEH WINNAR!!!!" invalid.

The speed difference you see is because of the SATA drives you are comparing spin at a MUCH higher rpm.
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You want to see the numbers for how badly a RAID0 array of WD 7200 rpm 160Gb SATA drives wups that ass on the IDE WD 7200rpm RAID0 array. :D
I can get them to you!
If you want you can just pull out SiSandra and just LOOK at the numbers.

SATA is faster!

Hands down!

Or the Maxtor ATA133 would have taken over the world. You cant even find very many motherbords that support that POS. AND NO OTHER HD MFG WOULD EITHER.

BTW, the Promise FastTrax is one of the FASTEST IDE RAID controlers ever produced. Beats the pants off any HighPoint Integrated Controller out there.
And I've got the chops to back up what I'm saying - I've got 2 IDE arrays and 2 SATA arrays running right now. The IDEs are on the wife & grandkids play machine and the SATA's are on my home machine. I'm not even going to mention the arrays at work.

It still boils down to - "what are you going to use it for?" IDE isn't for High Speed Access anymore. Large files on slower CPU's - it's great. Start doing some 3d modeling of assemblies with animations and see what happens.


I need to go check my Blood Pressure.
You need to to do a little reading and check out some benchmarking sites.
 
rodsfree said:
You want to see the numbers for how badly a RAID0 array of WD 7200 rpm 160Gb SATA drives wups that ass on the IDE WD 7200rpm RAID0 array. :D
I can get them to you!
If you want you can just pull out SiSandra and just LOOK at the numbers.

SATA is faster!

Hands down!

Or the Maxtor ATA133 would have taken over the world. You cant even find very many motherbords that support that POS. AND NO OTHER HD MFG WOULD EITHER.

BTW, the Promise FastTrax is one of the FASTEST IDE RAID controlers ever produced. Beats the pants off any HighPoint Integrated Controller out there.
And I've got the chops to back up what I'm saying - I've got 2 IDE arrays and 2 SATA arrays running right now. The IDEs are on the wife & grandkids play machine and the SATA's are on my home machine. I'm not even going to mention the arrays at work.

It still boils down to - "what are you going to use it for?" IDE isn't for High Speed Access anymore. Large files on slower CPU's - it's great. Start doing some 3d modeling of assemblies with animations and see what happens.


I need to go check my Blood Pressure.
You need to to do a little reading and check out some benchmarking sites.
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Hate to burst your bubble, but I would indeed like to see this information. AFAIK these WD SATA drives you refer to are WD PATA drives that have a SATA bridge installed.
 
Talonz said:
Hate to burst your bubble, but I would indeed like to see this information. AFAIK these WD SATA drives you refer to are WD PATA drives that have a SATA bridge installed.
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Go here http://www.pchardware.ro/Reviews/print.php?id=188

Using 2 Maxtor HD's Identical DiamondMAX's 1 Ultra ATA (133) and 1 SATA.
Compare the numbers for Onboard Ultra ATA Controler & HD vs the Promise SATA & SATA DiamondMax. Disregard the numbers for the HighPoint external drive, it doesn't apply to our discussion. And pick one of the 2 Promise Controlers.
This is an apples to apples UltraATA - SATA comparason. non-RAID0 setup, just single drive to drive.
SATA gets sustained 104Mb/sec
UltraATA gets sustained 92Mb/sec
Thats about 13% difference if I did my math right.

And that's ATA133 vs SATA.
We're talking about ATA100 vs SATA here.
Think the difference would increase doing that comparason?
 
I have a letter fro circuit city corperate that says they DO price match sam's club, so if a circuit city manager gives me shit I slap it on the table and go take that bitch! I also have the # to a CC rep and extention incase he wont call corperate to confirm I do it for him on my cell. He doesnt want to be proved wrong so he gives in. 250gb drive for about $25 thats 10 cents a gig !
 
Zero_Distortion said:
I have a letter fro circuit city corperate that says they DO price match sam's club, so if a circuit city manager gives me shit I slap it on the table and go take that bitch! I also have the # to a CC rep and extention incase he wont call corperate to confirm I do it for him on my cell. He doesnt want to be proved wrong so he gives in. 250gb drive for about $25 thats 10 cents a gig !
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I think what I'm going to do is go ahead and buy the drive and then take it back to the store citing the lesser price from Sam's club. (that way I have a receipt showing I paid full price for the rebates) if they don't match it, they get $180 more on their returns for that day.
 
rodsfree said:
SATA gets sustained 104Mb/sec
UltraATA gets sustained 92Mb/sec
Thats about 13% difference if I did my math right.

And that's ATA133 vs SATA.
We're talking about ATA100 vs SATA here.
Think the difference would increase doing that comparason?
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Real life performance > most crappy HD benches out there.

92 < 100 < 133

Look at the bolded above. So in this case how would ATA133 or ATA100 make any difference? And all of the SATA bridges are on PCI cards in this review correct? Any reviews of onboard SATA performance?

BTW from my personal experience, the difference between performance of PATA and SATA 7200rpm drives is non-existant or extremely minimal. Most Seagate and WD PATA drives (if not all of them) are still on ATA100 are they not? Any reason why they should go to ATA133?

Also from my experience, RAID0 blows ass. Risky and expensive. My 74gb raptor seems to run better than my 2x37gb in RAID0 ever did, and I tested them on a few different controllers with nearly every stripe size available. On top of that, faster seek times and less heat and power consumption.
 
rodsfree said:
Go here http://www.pchardware.ro/Reviews/print.php?id=188

Using 2 Maxtor HD's Identical DiamondMAX's 1 Ultra ATA (133) and 1 SATA.
Compare the numbers for Onboard Ultra ATA Controler & HD vs the Promise SATA & SATA DiamondMax. Disregard the numbers for the HighPoint external drive, it doesn't apply to our discussion. And pick one of the 2 Promise Controlers.
This is an apples to apples UltraATA - SATA comparason. non-RAID0 setup, just single drive to drive.
SATA gets sustained 104Mb/sec
UltraATA gets sustained 92Mb/sec
Thats about 13% difference if I did my math right.

And that's ATA133 vs SATA.
We're talking about ATA100 vs SATA here.
Think the difference would increase doing that comparason?
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This data still does not apply to our discussion.

That article is a review of controllers, not interfaces. You are trying to extrapolate data that isnt there. He compared a generic on-board IDE controller with a high performance add-on SATA controllers. If the reviewer was testing UATA vs SATA he would have used the same controller (the two Promise cards have both SATA and UATA interfaces).

Even still, your source of "proof" admits that: "As you can see, the difference between the UATA and SATA is not impressive in terms of absolute performance."

Bottom line: unless you are running 10,000 rpm drives, SATA / UATA does not matter.
 
Magic H8 Ball said:
This data still does not apply to our discussion.

That article is a review of controllers, not interfaces.
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Please explain how to seperate the interface from the controller being tested.

In my experience, it's impossible to test a hard drive without connecting it to a controller.

Testing 2 nearly identical hard drives with different controller/interfaces, levels the playing field and eliminates unexplained variation in the test. One of the basic rules of scientific method.
 
sKiDmArK said:
So in this case how would ATA133 or ATA100 make any difference?
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According to Maxtor - when they introduced ATA133 it was 33% faster than ATA100 - their marketing hype. It is about 12-15% faster than ATA100 though.



sKiDmArK said:
And all of the SATA bridges are on PCI cards in this review correct? Any reviews of onboard SATA performance?
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He didn't have an onboard SATA controller. Besidewhich, an onboard controller is on an extension of the PCI bus. It has an IRQ, DMA, and BusMastering capabilities - just like an add on card. So any performance difference is illusionary.


sKiDmArK said:
Most Seagate and WD PATA drives (if not all of them) are still on ATA100 are they not?
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No. All the major hard drive manufacturers have been producing SATA hard drives to meet the demands of the big systems vendors. It's a big marketing thing for Dell to be able to say that their system comes with the latest and fastest of everything. And if Dell does it then HP and everybody else has to follow. Also the reason why you are seeing sales like this one and the Staples thing and Sam's offering the WD250 for $129.99 is because the major hard drive producers are trying to eliminate stock of the OLD technology. SATA II is going to hit in the latter half of this year and when it does they won't be able to give an IDE hard drive to a systems vendor.


sKiDmArK said:
Any reason why they should go to ATA133?
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None at all. Maxtor actually screwed up when they released ATA133. They spent a bunch of money developing it, it was never an accepted standard, and it caused them to enter the SATA market a little later than everybody else. Therefore they lost marketshare.


sKiDmArK said:
Also from my experience, RAID0 blows ass. Risky and expensive. My 74gb raptor seems to run better than my 2x37gb in RAID0 ever did, and I tested them on a few different controllers with nearly every stripe size available. On top of that, faster seek times and less heat and power consumption.
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I agree that RAID0 is risky, but nomore risky than having everything on a single hard drive.
If you got 1 Raptor to transfer faster than 2 Raptors in a RAID0 then something was wrong. Just the fact that 2 heads are reading at the same time makes the RAID0 physically faster. It is in my system. I tested 1 of my Raptors and got a big increase when I doubled it into a RAID0 on the same onboard controler. It didn't double the transfer rate but it did pump it up pretty good.
 
rodsfree said:
Please explain how to seperate the interface from the controller being tested.

In my experience, it's impossible to test a hard drive without connecting it to a controller.

Testing 2 nearly identical hard drives with different controller/interfaces, levels the playing field and eliminates unexplained variation in the test. One of the basic rules of scientific method.
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1: Reading is fundaMENTAL:

Magic H8 Ball said:
If the reviewer was testing UATA vs SATA he would have used the same controller (the two Promise cards have both SATA and UATA interfaces).
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2: You have a very poor understanding of scientific method. You can not change variables A AND B and conclude that variable A is the sole cause of the variance. Also, If you had any comprehension of scientific method, you would know that it is very difficult to prove something is true. It is much easier to prove something is not true. Perhaps if you understood this you wouldn't be attempting to make such a weak argument for why "OMG SATA IS TEH WINNAR!!!111".

He tested ONE UATA controller. The only conclusion you can draw from that data is that those SATA controllers are faster that that ONE UATA controller. Using test data that is so lop-sided to "prove" your theory is laughable.
 
I nominate this for moronic quote of the week:

rodsfree said:
I agree that RAID0 is risky, but nomore risky than having everything on a single hard drive.
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Do understand what probability is?

A RAID0 setup (with two disks) is TWICE as likely to suffer a drive failure.

Lets say the probability of one drive failing is 1 out of a 100, then the probability of a RAID0 failure (assuming a 2 disk array) is 2 out of a 100.

Prob(A or B) = Prob(A) + Prob(B)

If either of the drives in your RAID0 setup fails, the array is hosed. All of your data is lost.
 
Just in time too, seems I have a dying drive at the house.

Guess I'll stop at lunch and get a replacement for it.

QM
 
Zero_Distortion said:
I have a letter fro circuit city corperate that says they DO price match sam's club, so if a circuit city manager gives me shit I slap it on the table and go take that bitch! I also have the # to a CC rep and extention incase he wont call corperate to confirm I do it for him on my cell. He doesnt want to be proved wrong so he gives in. 250gb drive for about $25 thats 10 cents a gig !
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Can you send me a copy of that letter?
:)
 
quasimodem said:
Just in time too, seems I have a dying drive at the house.

Guess I'll stop at lunch and get a replacement for it.

QM
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I do believe the sweetness of this deal is expired.
 
Magic H8 Ball said:
I nominate this for moronic quote of the week:



Do understand what probability is?

A RAID0 setup (with two disks) is TWICE as likely to suffer a drive failure.

Lets say the probability of one drive failing is 1 out of a 100, then the probability of a RAID0 failure (assuming a 2 disk array) is 2 out of a 100.

Prob(A or B) = Prob(A) + Prob(B)

If either of the drives in your RAID0 setup fails, the array is hosed. All of your data is lost.
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Unless it's an old IBM Deathstar drive. Then the chance of one of the two drives failing in a Raid0 setup is probably around 100%. ;)
 
Apallohadas said:
I do believe the sweetness of this deal is expired.
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How So?

CCity - Save $30-$40 on select Western Digital Hard Drives! 3/20-3/26
Western Digital - Save $60 on Hard Drive (WD2500JBRTL)! 3/20-3/26

unless my calander stopped today is 3/24 leaving me 2 more days to get my rebate in.

QM
 
Roberty said:
Unless it's an old IBM Deathstar drive. Then the chance of one of the two drives failing in a Raid0 setup is probably around 100%. ;)
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Funny you mention that, I have two "deathstars" from that era an neither one has failed yet. My guess is the majority of those failures were either from improper handling during shipping (including insufficient packaging) or insufficient cooling once installed..... but thats just my theory
 
Ok, so first I called CC's customer service line and asked them about price matching, the website isn't allowed to price match Sams (they're firewall blocks it). But the local stores are allowed to make the call, the CSR I spoke with said it depends on where Sam's is and where CC is located.

So I drove over to the CC near the office, and bought the drive. Gave the cashier the printout of the same drive from Sam's for 129.63 and he matched it. No questions asked.

So i'm mailing the rebate right now.

total price after rebates $29.63.

QM
 
Magic H8 Ball said:
Funny you mention that, I have two "deathstars" from that era an neither one has failed yet. My guess is the majority of those failures were either from improper handling during shipping (including insufficient packaging) or insufficient cooling once installed..... but thats just my theory
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No, there was a very real firmware issue with some of the GXP line (improper head parking IIRC). They fixed it in the end, but most drives were dead by then.
 
OK guys I'm done!

Go here: http://www.storagereview.com/php/benchmark/bench_sort.php

In StorageReview.com's highend benchmark there are 3 ATA 100 drives that are in the top 30. The rest are ALL SCSI or SATA's. 2 of those 3 are Western Digital's JB high end line. The ones with the 3 year warrenty.
Number 30 is a Maxtor ATA133.

I believe SATA is faster than PATA. Apparently StorageReview's benchmark does also.

If you don't then please dispute this with people that are more expert than I am.

Final question: Do either of you know how to lead a pig?
 
rodsfree said:
OK guys I'm done!

Go here: http://www.storagereview.com/php/benchmark/bench_sort.php

In StorageReview.com's highend benchmark there are 3 ATA 100 drives that are in the top 30. The rest are ALL SCSI or SATA's. 2 of those 3 are Western Digital's JB high end line. The ones with the 3 year warrenty.
Number 30 is a Maxtor ATA133.

I believe SATA is faster than PATA. Apparently StorageReview's benchmark does also.

If you don't then please dispute this with people that are more expert than I am.

Final question: Do either of you know how to lead a pig?
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I think that some people won't realize is that these benchmarks are synthetic, and unless your copying stuff to and from other disks all the time you won't notice any difference. Also do realize that from the transition to SATA, the older ATA100/133 drives do not have the platter density that the newer ones do have. So if they made an ATA version of the same drive you'd get similar performance. Storagereview don't seem to benchmark both ATA and SATA versions that often. Take for instance:
Maxtor MaXLine Plus II (250 GB SATA) 7Y250M0 405
Maxtor MaXLine Plus II (250 GB ATA-133) 7Y250P0 400
Big whoop!

I'm sorry to offend you if all you do is run a file server that is constantly being hammered, but I'm assuming that you are a gamer and that your data will be loaded to memory and you will be feel no difference after its loaded. Of course load time can be affected by your disk, but faster memory/cpu will help this more.

And no, I've never even seen a pig in real life, I don't live on a farm.
 
Well like i said before, performance isn't the only thing to consider. SATA drives are hot swappable and SATA cables take up alot less room and are easy to hide in comparison to rounded IDE cables.

Some of the new SATA drives even support NCQ and SATA II which do have a larger impact on performance depending on what you use the drive for.

If the hard drive is primarily just used for storage though then you might as well just go with the cheaper IDE drives.
 
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