Hard Drives

Hard drives come in many styles, SATA, ATA, SCSI, SAS not to mention the new Fibre Channel and Solid State varieties. Simply choose the type of hard drive that you need from the sections below.

  Solid State Drives (SSD's) seem to be the next emerging technology on the horizon for desktop and laptop computers. We're monitoring the performance, durability and cost per Gigabyte on these new drives in hopes that the manufacturers will be able to make them a viable replacement for the array of electro-mechanical drives we now use. Solid State drives will provide almost instant data availability with a lower power consumption. Currently these drives are priced very high and the long term longevity is an unknown. Until the SATAIII 6 Gb/s protocol arrives in general use allowing the drives to provide more of their performance potential we don't forsee the SSD's becoming much of an option for the mainstream. By using the SATAII bus their performance will remain limited to the constraints of that bus. Expect great things from SSD's in the future.

Beware the OEM drive! The hard drive market is currently flooded with server and desktop OEM drives being sold at huge discounts. These drives usually have custom or proprietary firmware with no manufacturers warranty and tend to cause a lot of compatibility problems. We recommend that you stick with RETAIL drives for the best performance, reliability and full manufacturers warranty.