500GB SATA HDD for $160

[markrb38]

Originally posted by: GeezerMan
I went to Best Buy a few weeks ago looking for those 30% coupons in the back to School promotion. They thought I was crazy. I went to several registers thumbing through stacks of the coupons looking for the 30%. No luck. The checkout dude knew about the secret code, so I bet the employees yanked them for themselves.
Anyway, I got an email today from Best Buy offering me 10% off,includes drives. It totals 159.90 delivered. Stores near me are out of stock. I might do it. 159.90 delivered is not too bad.

I got the same coupon online, but no tax for me in NH.
So it's just 150 shipped for me.
Backordered, but I am OK with that. Hopefully they won't screw me again.

Yes hardware RAID 5 is very stable, but can be expensive. A good Hardware controller starts around $400. It's not for people looking for speed as part of the gains are negated by the parity checking, but good for data reliability. Software RAID 5 can hog a CPU.

Mark

 

[VooDooAddict]

Originally posted by: EDiT

Originally posted by: najames
Sorry, I didn't intend to "thread crap", my apologies. I guess I don't consider 320/400GB drives as in the "small" category. I was originally thinking that 640GB would be better than 500GB, then I thought that 1 little drive+4x320s in a RAID5 should give a full TB of formatted storage and would be enough for most people. Also if one dies, it might be cheaper/easier to find and replace a sub$100 drive. If you what to use the 500GB drives, go for it.

Our standard Dell Optiplex PC at work has one 40GB, and my Sun V440 (4CPUs, 16GB Ram) only has about 300GB from the disk pool, but I use data compression where appropriate and do ok.

Let's see the issues with your "better" deal....
- Neither of your deals gets anyone over 500GB usable for less than $160
- Multiple disks means more power usage
- Multiple disks means more heat, which leads to more power for Air Conditioning
- Multiple disks means more slots in use, which is not possible in small chassis
- Multiple disks means more noise
- Clearly you have not built any HTPCs or DVRs. Heat, noise, and space all require the biggest drives possible due to limitations of multiple drives.

In short, since you did not in fact know of any better COMPARABLE deals, and you still came in here saying this is a bad deal, that means you were thread crapping. Last I looked, that is not welcome on AT.

By the way, since you seemed to have missed it, the rules post at the top of the forum says:

No thread crapping. If the subject matter of a deal does not interest you, do not post negative comments about it, or about other members, in the thread.

QFT

More space, power, heat, and noise with any Raid setup. I've got a bunch od 120's and 250's in my Server tower I'm going to start swapping them out for 500's soon.