HR Geeks

I’ve been looking around at what some new storage would cost me – looking for a few TB of space to cover all of my digital media, as well as to allow for easy growth in the future.  As part of this, I spent some time figuring out what is currently most cost effective, from a dollars-per-gigabyte perspective.  This isn’t always obvious, as there are a range of drive sizes, and variations within each size between different manufacturers.  

This stuff changes pretty substantially year to year, so it’s worthwhile to go back and see exactly where the sweet spot is.  Today, from a cost-per-gig standpoint, the Seagate 1.5TB and the Samsung 1TB discs barely nudge ahead, coming in at a mere $0.12/GB.

 Here’s a quick break down of that statistical information, as of October 21, 2008:

(edit: fixed messed up pricing for Samsung disks).

All disks in the comparison shared the following characteristics:

• 3.5″ Internal SATA 3.0Gb/s Connector
• 7200 RPM spindle speed
• 8MB Cache @ 250GB, 16MB Cache @ 500GB, and 32MB Cache @ 750/1000/1500GB tiers
• ‘OEM’ pricing on Newegg, disregarding any special offers or rebates (instant or otherwise) 

On a per-tier basis, the following disks were used:

250GB Tier

• Hitachi P7K500 HDP725025GLA380 (0A35399) – $54.99
• Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500AAJS – $49.99
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250310AS – $49.99
• Samsung does not make a 250GB 3.5″ disk

500GB Tier

• Hitachi P7K500 HDP725050GLA360 (0A35415) – $69.99
• Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS – $69.99
• Seagate 7200.10 ST3500630A – $79.99
• Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD502lJ – $69.99

750GB Tier

• Hitachi K1000 HDS721075KLA330 (0A35154) – $99.99
• Western Digital Caviar Black WD7501AALS – $129.99
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3750330AS – $109.99
• Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD753LJ – $99.99

1000GB (1TB) Tier

• Hitachi K1000 HDS721010KLA330 (0A35155) – $129.99
• Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS – $149.99
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000340AS – $139.99
• Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ – $119.99

1500GB (1.5TB) Tier

• Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS – $179.99
• Western Digital, Hitachi, and Samsung do not yet produce 1500GB drives