Hey fellez, its time for me to get another hard drive. Not so sure about the updated gizmoes out there. I'm looking into getting one with performance for my plan is to install windows 7 64bit on it.

WD Raptors +1, cost not so sure now

need some pointers


Cheers

pauline recommends this place all the time: http://www.fluidtek.com.au/
but you guys seem to get even cheaper ! The computer markets at NSW uni perhaps ?

This is the other place pauline recommends: http://www.ccpu.com.au/
Yes they are the typical dodgey asian shops
or type what you want in: http://www.staticice.com.au/
and see what the cheapest shop is

I wouldn't go to Fluidtek if they were the last IT store on earth. Eddy (owner) is a dickhead.

Can't go past the Western Digital 640GB's for bang for buck. 6400AAKS or 6401AALS are the models you're looking for. Hit up staticice

If you are looking for a fast read and write speed you might also wanna take a look at a soild state drive SSD they are said to be better than WD Raptors well at least some of them. you are gonna pay big money for though

The only SSD's you should be looking at now are the OCZ Vertex series and the Intel X-25M's. The other drives suffer from simultaneous read/write issues and perform like shit in these situations.

A good read here - http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3535

also dont forget RAID solutions as well

I'm running 2 320GB HDD is Striped mode. Performance is excellent.

320's can be had for under $70

http://www.centrecom.com.au/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=107_22&products_id=37525

500Gb for $81

http://www.centrecom.com.au/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=107_22&products_id=37086

+$9 Postage

Just a thought

IF YOUR LOOKING FOR FAST IM USING 4 BARRACUDAS AT ONLY 7200 IN A RAID 5 ON A DELL RAID CARD (with LSI MegaRaid drivers) AND THEY WRITE AT 560MBS..... AND THATS MY STORAGE DRIVE LOL.


ShiftkeyFTW

sorry all, I am ignorant. Pauline told me fluitek can be dodgey, but they are cheap.
We found this. http://www.xpmediacentre.com.au/community/other-hardware-xpmce/24829-warning-horror-vendor-experience-avoid-fluidtek.html

I buy through IT estate and I had no complaints, but thought they were more expensive than fluidtek. I also had them courier the system too. Again, no complaints

As for the rest of you, where do you buy from ? I thought fluidtek was cheap but you guys seem to buy for even less !!! lucky bastards

wholesale from Altech.

Centrecom are cheap both parts and postage, but sometimes you may have to wait for parts (more often than some places)

www.centrecom.com.au

Hi Charlie

When you are buying a hd if price matters you need to work out the best GB per $.

I have cruised the web and found some basic prices for 500mb, 750 and 1 terra.

Keep in mind that 1tb these days is 1000gb not 1024 as you might think...anyway

500mb $80 which is 16 cents per gb - www.ccpu.com.au

750mb $124 which is 16.5 cents per gb - www.itestate.com.au

750mb $99 (must buy 2) which is 13.2 cents per gb - www.fluidtek.com.au

1Tb $135 which is 13.5 cents per gb - www.ccpu.com.au

Blank discs (Computer fair $35 per 100) which is 7.5 cents per gb... WINNER!

How computers see it:
1024b=1kbx1024=1mbx1024=1gbx1024=1tb

How marketing sees it:
1000b=1kbx1000=1mbx1000=1gbx1000=1tb


for example: my harddrive marketed to be 640 gb is actually 596GB


the short story:
the proper way to do it is as computers see but marketing likes to take shortcuts so they make you think youre getting more, youre getting less. its gotta be multiples of 2, thats how the system works, hence the 1024.

this url says im impressing friends by saying this
http://www.sharpened.net/helpcenter/answer.php?40


some math to show the loss:

if one gigabyte is, according to a computer: 1,073,741,824 bytes
then youre losing 73,741,824 bytes (or ~73.741 megabytes) per gigabyte youre believing to buy

no it doesnt even out! lol
if im told im buying 640gb, I WANT ALL OF IT! not 596, thats 44gb magically gone!

to put it into terms anyone can understand: its approx. equal to 64 ~700mb movies worth of data storage gone!



if you want a nice rounded number like 500gb, youre actually get 465gb of storage! fuckin jipped!

yeah thats happen to me quite a few times your dog. HD are cheap... i think il go for a 500GB hd for its price its awsome.

500GB of porn...

might by another one then... lol

just go the for the standard 1tb hdd

i believe samsung had a really good rating for their 1tbs by alot of companies/magazin

msy would be the cheapest place to get em. got my 2 tbs for 120each

well because its misleading

people dont understand how all computers work, if youve worked in electronic retail youll realise that its such a fuckin headache at how stupid / unknowledgeable some people are.

then again, its the same as why people think theres 24 hours in a day, and not 23 and 54 mins or whatever it is, which changes a bit.


even though its a convenience thing, if youre being told youre buying 640 gig, losing 40 of that 640 is quite alot. if youre led to believe you got 20g downloads a month, but its done as 20 x 1000mb, then youre getting less than you actually thought because computers process data by the 2^10 system, not, the standard 1000s.

Geez... I wonder if your dog complains about the cans of My Dog and PAL and any extra filler like horse meat ?!?!?!?!

EW GROSS

besides i prefer fresh lamb or beef meat, although im not the one who does the killing - i cant staaand the sight of blood! violence is pretty appalling but oh so tasty.
=]

its because when they set up the disk and say 'im gonna make it 500gb large' they type 500gbx1000x1000.. bytes, and not 1024x1024x1024..

which results in the diff values. if they just used the 1024 instead of 1000 thered be nothing wrong with that, in fact it'd eliminate any confusion and help people better understand how computers work. sometimes simplyfing things doesnt help people, just make them unwillingly ignorant


also a few people do notice they are missing space, but no not everyone. BUT THAT DOESNT MAKE IT RIGHT!!!

your dog wrote:

also a few people do notice they are missing space, but no not everyone. BUT THAT DOESNT MAKE IT RIGHT!!!

Hey your doggie, I totally agree with you, marketing and marketers suck. (hope you 2 are not marketers ). When I formatted my hard disks I noticed the GBs were different to what I purchased too. After pauline's explanation I was confused and just accepted that I got what I paid for because I am too dumb to know any better.
also a few people [like Pauline] do notice they are missing space, but no not everyone. BUT THAT DOESNT MAKE IT RIGHT [or left because pauline is missing BOTH sides of the brain]!!!

lol nice copout thrown in at the end, smooooooth! =P

everything is marketed to the companies advantage!

I've mentioned this before but powered electrical gear is the same too....stating they have 4000watts of drill power or speaker power but the damn things arent regulated by real life terms, they are done by lab tests to obtain satisfactory output powers which arent true to real life expectations.

and YD, they make HD's at 200gb or so, not 160gb and label it as 200gb, it's the OS that caps them for reasons I dont know of. Maybe its a safety partition or something.

Dessi:

they make them by simply using 1000s to refer to each level of bytes, but computers work in binary and do things to the power of 2 (2^) where you dont get a clean 1000 but 1024, so a gigbyte is actually 2^10

so for them, to call 500gb as 500x1000x1000x1000byes, it seems correct. but as a computer requires 1024 bytes to make a kilobyte, and 1024 kilobytes to make a megabyte, and 1024 megabytes to make a gigabyte, it wont read it as 500 but actually 465gb.


nothing to do with the OS, everything to do with binary being the basis.
no safety partitions, nothing. its just they refer to it by different base number than they should.

(and yes there is a teeny tiny bit used for addressing space n stuff, but thats like a few kb. not several gigabytes)

you can try this practice for yourself: next time you format a hardrive, make a partition, and if you want it to be say 50gb, itll ask for you to input size in kb ( if i remember correctly) so try writing 50,000,000 for 50gb, and see what it actually turns out to be.

You need to think back to when hard drives were first released to realise why they did this. Nowadays it makes a hell of a lot more difference compared to back when they first decided to do it.

A "40MB Hard Drive" as we knew it would've been a bit stupid to call it a "38.147MB Hard Drive". Or IBM's first 5MB Hard Drive that weighed over a tonne would've been better called a 4.7684MB Hard Drive?

Ease of use. Unfortunately that ease of use equates to ~50GB of advertised loss nowadays. Never fear though, SSD has started to correct this with many drives being dubbed 30/60GB, instead of 32/64GB, etc. Don't expect all manufactures to follow suit, but they should.