Revitalizing an Older System On the Cheap: Two 160GB ATA Drives Under $80- Page 2/6
January 18, 2006
By
Thomas Soderstrom
Size, Price, and Other Considerations
We specifically chose 160GB units because smaller drives provide significantly less capacity per dollar spent. Part of this is due to manufacturing cost, as most 120GB drives are simply 160GB drives with part of the capacity disabled.
Smaller-capacity drives may be recommended for systems more than four years old whenever BIOS updates are not available to overcome a 128GB limit. Partition size limits also affects file systems, with Windows 9x supporting a maximum of 128GB per partition. Windows XP requires at least Service Pack 1 to support partitions larger than 128GB. Multiple partitions are an option for OS and file system restrictions, but lack of adequate BIOS support would require an add-in controller card.
All five major drive manufacturers offer 120GB and smaller drives, but at minimal cost savings.
The Drives
We contacted all five major manufacturers -- soon to be four, due to Seagate's acquisition of Maxtor -- looking for drives that came in under $80, which we estimate to be a price point offering an ideal level of value without making an investment in older systems price-prohibitive (or a waste of money, considering that the price difference might best be put toward upgrading other components.)
Not surprisingly, the vendors didn't jump at the opportunity to promote their lower-budget, less-sexy offerings when they were focusing much of their marketing effort on newer drives. At any rate, circumstance and timing prompted us to restrict our survey to two companies soon to be one, Maxtor and Seagate, ironically still competing for the moment (until the acquisition closes) to win customer loyalty through the midrange upgrade and repair market. (To their credit, all the major vendors did their part to help, but Western Digital was unable to participate due to documentation issues. Hitachi put forth a good effort, but was unable to meet our deadline. Samsung's PR firm agreed, but miscommunication between PR firm and manufacturer brought us a drive with the wrong interface for comparison.)
Maxtor's DiamondMax10 represents its latest DiamondMax line. Boasting an 8MB cache and reduced seek times, this 7200RPM bare drive includes a three-year factory warranty. Its 100GB per platter capacity would normally offer still more value at the 200GB mark, but we chose the 160GB version to fit within our budget. Maxtor's ATA-133 interface is backward compatible with ATA-100 controllers.
The second drive in this comparison also features a 7200RPM spindle speed and 8MB cache, but similarities end there. Seagate's 7200.9 160GB drive uses a phenomenally high-density single 160GB platter to reduce heat, noise, and power consumption. Seagate chooses the more widely-supported ATA-100 interface, and provides a substantial five-year warranty for both bare and retail boxed units.
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