Where can I buy Serial ATA hard drives?

[Ioman]

I have been asking this for the past 5 months, where the heck can I buy a serial ATA hard drive!? I keep reading in reviews that they are on the market, but where? Any help would be appreciated.

[shagnscoob]

like a scsi serial ata drive?








( i have no ****ing clue what that is, i just put together words i have heard about hard drives :D )

[Strippy]

So far, I've only seen it at the major vendors

CDW has the Segate ones (80/120GB, 7200rpm) @ $139 and $189 .. but ship time is unknown.

http://www.cdw.com/shop/search/results.asp?FilteredGroup=HDA

PCMall also has the 80GB version $136 or so.

Wait time is long extremely long... oh wells.. I just placed my order for a IDE -> SATA converter.. just so I can use the SATA interface. I'll let you know how it goes bro.

-Strip

[Ioman]

oooh good find. I hate buying from CDW though, they are pretty expensive. My motherboard actually supports SATA drives so I am stoked that they are finally available on the market.

Serial ATA is a new format other than EIDE and SCSI, it uses a small cable which is a little thicker than your CD-ROM cable and transfers around 150MBps where ATA 133 is at 133MBps. I figure I have the ability to use them, I will just wait until they are out. I also want the largest size I can. Right now I only have a 30Gb IBM drive. Time for an upgrade.

[llbbl]

It might be better for some people whom have the ability to use SATA to wait for a year or so before they think about getting a drive of this type. That way you can give the market time to lower its price.

[Ioman]

Well actually, the SATA drives that are entering the market do not seem to be any more expensive than the current EIDE drives.from what I can tell.

[Strippy]

There's a new SATA drive out from WD, 120+GB 10,000RPM 5.X ms access time... man that would be sweet.

Too bad it's from WD though =( can't wait for Maxtor to release the same thing with 8MB or 16MB cache.... SATA is what i'm goinna use since I can't boot off my firewire drive :( IDE is gay

[Halo]

I'd have to agree with TechnoGeek. The market is so bleeding edge right now, you're paying top dollar for products and moreover we're getting products that have questionable if not experimental device drivers. It's not fair to consumers to have so many problems assoicated with new products, and yet there are. For as much of an AMD fan as I am, the problems between the mobo manufacturer drivers, BIOS, etc. and the new procs is unbelievable.
Why spend top dollar on a technology that until 2004 is not going to provide any drastic improvements. Yes SATA is faster than ATA, but SATA is moving 150 mbps compared to ATA 133 mbps and some 150 mbps. Why not wait until SATA-II which is an exponential improvement in the technology and will bring somewhere along the lines of 300mbps data transfer.

a good article to read comes from Tom's Hardware:
http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20030204/serial_ata-17.html

[gRimLocK]

I hear this week retail in stores. I will let you know if I see them at work.

[Ioman]

Originally posted by gRimLocK
I hear this week retail in stores. I will let you know if I see them at work.


Any word Grim? I have not see them anywhere here yet. I would like to buy one ASAP.