Published on May 01, 2005

ATA-boy! Prices are plunging for broad-shouldered hard drives, so it’s time to beef up

The price of some hard drive models with a huge 200 gigabyte capacity have now fallen below Bt4,500. For example, a 200-GB Maxtor hard drive retails for only Bt4,320. That’s good news for those who bought a computer with a hard drive with less than 100 GB capacity.

As far as hard drives are concerned, the higher capacity the better. If a user is a multimedia enthusiast they will find their hard drive filling up very quickly.

You need plenty of space on a hard drive for storing and editing digital photo files, digital music files, game files and most of all digital video files. When shopping for a new hard drive consult your computer manual to see which hard drive interface it uses.

Currently, there are three commonly-used interface ATA100, ATA133 and Serial ATA.

ATA stands for Advanced Technology Attachment, an interface designed to connect drives to a computer motherboard. The numbers 100 and 133 show that the drive can send and receive data to and from the motherboard at the rate of 100 megabytes and 133 megabytes per second respectively.

The SATA interface has come to replace the ATA100 and ATA133. The SATA interface, whose cable is much smaller, has a data bandwidth of 150 MB per second.

Most previous models of computers use ATA100 hard drive interface. The ATA133 came into use shortly before the SATA was adopted. All the new computer models now use SATA interface.

It’s also good idea to consider a hard drive with the longest warranty time although the price may be a little bit higher. This is because a hard drive tends to become defective after three years of usage.

One tip from computer savvy users is to buy hard drives distributed by D Computer, who are known for their excellent after-sales service. They replace any defective hard drive within the warranty period.

If your system uses ATA100 interface, you may consider Seagate 200 GB model with a five-year warranty from D Computer, which retails for Bt4,390.

A SATA model of 200 GB, also with a five year warranty from D Computer, retails for Bt5,070.

If you unwilling to open you computer case to install a new hard drive, you might consider an external model. Maxtor has three external models of 200 GB, 250 GB and 300 GB, which retail for Bt9,100, Bt10,500 and Bt11,900 respectively.

Their prices are much higher than internal models, but they are portable, allowing you to move huge files from one system to another.

These portable drives connect to your computer using FireWire and USB 2.0 port, transferring data to your computer at the rates of 400 and 480 megabytes per second respectively.

The prices on the accompanying chart are quoted from Speed Computer shop for your reference.

Paisal Chuenprasaeng

The Nation

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