What is the biggest SATA hard drive available?

[gangst]

Hi,

I went on the Apple website and was looking at the Powermac G5s and saw that it were possible to have two 400GB hard drives installed on your Powermac. What is the biggest size available at the moment on SATA? Is it 400GB? I'd like to get the most storage possible in my Powermac (ordering next week, cannot wait!) and I think 800GB from Apple looked a bit costly so I figured, I could save money by installing the hard drives myself and also get more storage (thats if there are SATA drives bigger than 400GB) .

 

[lopresmb]

Biggest I can find after a quick look at newegg.com is a

$500 USD
HITACHI Deskstar 7K500 0A31619 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
(limit 20 per customer)

Average Seek Time: 8.5ms
Cache: 16MB
Features: High interface transfer rates SATA II - 3.0 Gb/s interface Rotational Vibration Safeguard Faster system boot-up 300MB/s burst data rate for faster data access Optimum performance in multi-drive systems
Form Factor: 3.5"
Manufacturer Warranty: 3 Years

Model #: 0A31619
Item #: N82E16822147007


or a


400GB drive for $277.
Western Digital Caviar RE2 WD4000YR 400GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM

Average Latency: 4.2ms
Average Seek Time: 8.7ms
Average Write Time: 9.8ms
Cache: 16MB
Features: RAID-specific time-limited error recovery (TLER)–this feature, unique to WD, prevents drive fallout caused by the extended hard drive error-recovery processes common to desktop drives. Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF™)–optimizes operation and performance when the drives are used in vibration-prone multi-drive systems such as rack mounted servers and network storage. 1.2
Form Factor: 3.5"
Manufacturer Warranty: 5 Years

Model #: WD4000YR
Item #: N82E16822144424

--Also check out www.lacie.com as they have some silly big machines (one lacie SATA II drive up to 2.5 TB)

 

[blackscooby]

I looked at hard drives briefly earlier this week, biggest one I've seen so far is a Seagate Barracuda at 400Gb as below :-
Seagate Barracuda SATA NCQ 7200.8 400GB 8Mb Cache Hard Drive

Cost (UK) is £185 including taxes, so around $300 USD.
I'm sure there are others, but this was the one I found on ebuyer.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

You can get a 500 GB Hitachi Deskstar for £225, but I think I'd rather lean towards a 400GB Seagate Barracuda for £179. The Barracudas rule!

 

[gangst]

thanks for your help everyone. I think I'll get two 400GB drives as the price jump from 400GB to 500GB is very big and I wouldn't save any money, in fact it would cost me more lol. However, having 1TB in a Powermac is appealing, but the cost is too high at the moment

 

[AmigoMac]

3.5" ?

 

[witness]

I bought 5 400GB Seagate Barracuda drives recently, they are nice a quiet. I haven't had them long enough to comment on the longevity, but they get good reviews.

Scan is the cheapest place to get them in the UK at the moment.

 

[xyian]

Go with what you know.

I'd say go with the Barracuda 400GB drives. They are silent, super reliable, and I've never had an issue with them. WD on the other hand........

 

[ZenNerd]

I think you might want to recheck that price at newegg.com. I just checked and the hitachi 500GB sata drive is $327.00 right now.