[Nottingham] HDD price rises

Roger Light roger at atchoo.org
Thu Nov 3 14:51:09 UTC 2011


> 1) Is SATA III backwards compatible with SATA II?  I think it is, but
> it'd be an expensive mistake to make (the HP Micorserver is SATA II) and
> for some reason SATA III drives are way cheaper than SATA II (go
> figure).  Wikipedia is silent on the subject of SATA III compatibility.

The final sentence of the "SATA revision 3.0 (SATA 6 Gbit/s)" section
of the Serial ATA wikipedia page states: "The later standard is
backwards compatible with SATA 3 Gbit/s." Where SATA 3 Gbit/s has
become synonymous with SATA 2. The linked reference states that using
II and III for the specification numbers should be avoided.

> 2) Seagate Barracuda Green (5400rpm) or WD Caviar Green
> ('IntelliPower'rpm)?  I've never had much trouble with drives from
> either company and WD replaced a failed USB drive without quibble.  WD
> is £22 more and I intend to buy two HDDs.

They have the Caviar Green has intellipark, which parks the read head
after 8 seconds of inactivity. I'm going from memory, but think
they're rated for 300k head parks. I know the raid versions are rated
for 600k. If you read/write once every 8 seconds for a month you'll
exceed 300k parks. Whether this is a concern very much depends on how
you'll use the drive. If you have constant activity or very infrequent
activity it should be fine.

> 3) Wait a few months for the hype/speculation to die down and buy
> cheaply after Chrimbo?

It depends on whether you think it will go down so quickly... or
increase further if supply doesn't start up quickly.

Cheers,

Roger



More information about the Nottingham mailing list