Quantum 7200 RPM Drives cheap - 30GB $88

[BLoop]

From Techbargains:

At these prices, they lead in price/performance. Buy.com has the following good deals on Quantum Fireball LM Hard Drives: 7200 RPM 2MB Cache Series. 10 GB GB $91.95 - $10 rebate - $10 coupon from our coupon section = $71.95 after Rebate. 15 GB $100.95 - $15 rebate - $20 coupon = $65.95. 20 GB $120.95 - $20 rebate - $20 coupon = $80.95. WOW! 30 GB $148.95 - $30 rebate - $30 coupon = $88.95. (Add $1.05 more to your cart) Rebate expires 12/31

Here are the links:
10GB
15GB
20GB
30GB
Rebates

Sounds good to me.

 

[divinemartyr]

This message has been passed around for quite some time now, I've already taken advantage of it. Was my first order from buy.com and I am impressed. It only took me 2, MAYBE 3 days to get my order from when I placed it, and when you're using UPS ground, that's a pretty fast. I luckily picked up on this when buy.com had free shipping. Right now you're looking at another $7 for shipping via ups ground.

This drive is the fastest of the 30 gb size according to storagereview.com and the only one tested faster out of the ATA/66 and ATA/100 drives was the IBM Deskstar which is a 45 gb model and will cost you close to $170 with a decent deal, so based on price and performance, the Quantum drive is the way to go. Nothing under $100 beats it.

 

[DealSpreeDotCom]

i just ordered the 30 giger...i hope i just remember the darn rebate!

 

[JJordan]

Is it worth the extra cash to buy a PCI controller like the Promise ATA 66 for $20.66 for those of us with Motherboards that don't support UDMA 66 (you have to spend another $3 any way to use the 30 off 150 on the 40 gig drive). ??????

Promise Controller

 

[divinemartyr]

JJordan,

Considering if you do not have UDMA/66/100 support on your motherboard, you will need a card for it to even use the drive, yes. The connector for UDMA/66 is different from that of UDMA/33, the standard is not the same. However UDMA/66 and UDMA/100 are the same connectors and UDMA/100 is backwards compatible with UDMA/66. As far as UDMA/66 being able to support a UDMA/100 drive at 66MB/s I do not know.

divinemartyr

 

[JJordan]

I thought these were backwards compatible to UDMA 33 motherboards (of course all you would get is DMA 33 performance) ?????

 

[MontyBurns]

You can use this drive with an ATA/33 motherboard just fine, but yes, you won't get the speed.

I bought the promise card when I bought the drive. It seems zippy, but it's tough for me to say whether it was really all that much faster. Regardless, I wanted an ATA/66 card, and my motherboard slots were all full. So go for it.

 

[Valvoline6]

You are correct JJordan. I just hooked up my old UDMA 33 hard drive to the same ATA 100 cable as my ATA 100 hard drive to copy files and it worked fine.. although both were then opperating at udma 33

 

[swayinOtis]

At first I wasn't sure about the rebate and coupon offer until I went to the t-echbargains.com site and found the links to both. Thanks. Just ordered a 20GB model.

Guess that memory I have been wanting is going to have to wait. LOL

 

[manly]

sorry, divinemartyr doesn't know what he's talking about.

The connector is the same 40-pin connector we've always had for IDE (afaik). He is probably getting confused that to run ATA/66, you need a higher-quality cable (80-conductor), that I believe has twice as many internal wires but the same external interface. If you use any old IDE cable you have lying around, it will just function at UDMA/33.

However, to answer your question, no you don't lose much by not having ATA/66 and definitely you gain nothing by having ATA/100. As most hardware sites conclude, there is no drive out there even capable of a sustained 40 MB/s throughput, so ATA/100 is more of marketing hype and future potential expandability than anything else.

In fact, think of this way.. your data has to be perfectly unfragmented, and you'd have to be reading a continuous stream of data off the platter to even max out UDMA/33. The chances of that happening are pretty low, so I would have to recommend against getting an add-on controller card. It's just not going to help out much, if any.

 

[bcoombs]

Isn't it correct to say that this harddrive leads in performance/price, not price/performance. I mean, if the performance is the same between two drives, and the price is lower, than performance divided by price would yield a greater number, whereas price/performance would yield a smaller number.

Or, if the prices are the same, and one outperforms the other, you would only have a greater value by having a performance/price comparison. Right?

Just simantics. I must have too much time on my hands...

 

[MJB]

Just to clarify for those who might be confused by divinemartyr's incorrect previous post.....

- UDMA/66/100 uses the SAME connector as UDMA/33.
- UDMA/66/100 drives CAN be used with older UDMA/33 boards/controllers.
- The difference between the two interfaces is the CABLE. You MUST use a UDMA/66/100 cable with your drive to use UDMA/66/100 mode. (Although the connectors are the same, the cable is much higher spec, with grounds around every I/O signal, improving signal quality enough to allow the higher transfer rates)

And, for any given IDE channel, data transfer rate will be limited by the speed of the SLOWEST device. In other words, don't use an older UDMA/33 drive on the same IDE channel as a UDMA/66/100 drive.

Instead, put the UDMA/66/100 on Primary channel and UDMA/33 on Secondary channel.

 

[NazzyG]

Quantum sucks. Why in the world would you want to get a slower drive that will probably die on you before the year is out, when you could get a Western Digital for the same price that would last you years to come?! I haven't looked at the stats for this model, but based on my past "fireball" experience, this drive is proably slower than the 5400 rpm WD models...and in our ITS department we have so many dead Quantum drives it's sickening. Not a single dead Western Digital. If one of those dies, you usually get a free replacement from WDC.

$0.02

 

[jblondi]

I ordered mine 3 months ago, still waiting on the rebate. Good drive though. Just a thought if you think you will get the rebate quickly.

 

[randomlinh]

The drive is plenty fast, don't judge something without "looking at the stats"

However, i can't say much for the quality, the drive keeled over in a week and a half. BUT, that was on 24/7 usage. I don't know if it was specific to me, or if any IDE can really take a 24/7 for 2 week beating (pushing 20-30GB+/day), but thats just something to consider.

 

[audscott]

I hwve been buring from Buy.com for a year, maybe a little more...I have found they have consistant pricing, sometines, as with these adds better than average and even really great.

They have always shown to be a great source for quick products - never has a shipment taken more than 3 days, usually 2 & that's rare now-a-days.

 

[NazzyG]

You can pretty well judge an item by the company's reputation. It's very unlikely that this drive would be the rose among thorns.

Not worth arguing over though. You definitely don't have to take my word for it, but you're experience seems to support my viewpoint.

Since my last post I just got in my new 20.5GB 7200 RPM Western Digital. I had an 18.5 which I've been using 24/7 for the past 6 months that died recently. I called up Western Digital after running their diagnostics and they shipped me out a new model to replace my old one. That's the sort of customer service that wins lifelong customers...and this isn't the first instance that I've seen such from WDC.

 

[MJB]

Hmmm, yeah my 20Gb drive up and died 3 months after I bought it too. Wouldn't spin up. I did an "advance replacement" with Quantum warranty service. Then when the new drive came, I swapped the controller boards on the drives and VIOLA, it spun up and I copied off all my data. (Then switched back the boards to their original drives and sent the bad one back.)

I think after this disturbing amount of failures people are seeing, I would have to avoid these drives and go for an IBM or WD.

 

[dafatha00]

haha..im so dumb, i never cashed in my 30 dollar mail in rebate

 

[swayinOtis]

I love these aholes like NazzyG who have to bring people down by trashing things. Hey, I have a 3 y/o 4 GB DMA33 WD Caviar. It's been a good drive but it is slow and I am running out of space. For $80 I can get a brand new 20GB ATA/66 drive with a 3 YEAR WARRANTY so take your crummy opinions and cram it. hehe I have 3 years warranty, and $80 aint that big of a deal to me, so deal with that sucker.

 

[NazzyG]

If you had any clue what I was saying then you would understand that you can get the SAME AMOUNT OF SPACE in a Western Digital drive for the same price as this Quantum.
Try pricematching OfficeDepot to OfficeMax's price and getting OD's $50 instant rebate + the $30 mail in WD rebate. You'll get a better drive for the same price as this one and you wont have to do mail order...you have it that day.

If you wish to continue flaming me, do it in private messages. This forum is for the adult conversations.

 

[Capster]

Interestingly enough the only Quantum drives I've ever seen as being continually problematic is their Bigfoot line of drives. All of their other ide and scsi drives have been great. Sure a few go bad now and then but these or the Maxtors have not been near the problem child as the Western Digitals. Gateway has shipped most of their systems to us with WD's and we can always count on a good portion of them to go bad within 3 years.

 

[bcoombs]

NazzyG: Not to flame you, but in one post, you say that people should get the WDC because it will last for years. Then, in your follow up post, you extoll the virtues of WD service for replacing your six-month old WDC so quickly. So, does it last for years, or six months with great service? Just pointing out a small contradiction, that's all.

 

[swayinOtis]

Sorry Naz but all you basically did was give your subjective and pompous opinion. This is the hot deals forum. Someone wrote about a hot deal on the Quantum. All you did was tell everyone how crummy they are. If you knew of a better deal on the WD you should have said so specifically. Instead you just shot your mouth off about how crummy the Quantums are. Look on deja news (know what a newsgroup is?) and you will see lots of people have lots of problems with your precious WD drives, so there!


:disgust:

 

[Triumph]

listen, this topic has been beaten to DEATH! i've been browsing anandtech and the ng's for a long time now, and EVERYhard drive discussion goes like this:

&quot;I'll never buy a <<Insert name here>> again, it died on me after XXX days! I'm only sticking with <<Insert name here>>. I've never had a problem with them.&quot;

THAT'S JUST THE WAY IT IS!! so buy Quantum, buy WD, buy Maxtor, buy IBM, it don't matter. Go for $$ per meg and performance. End of story.