I see that Newegg.com lists the Seagate 1.5TB SATA hard drive for $129.99 with free shipping. Sure, it’s an OEM drive, which means it’s not boxed, but who cares? Do you realize what this means? It means you’re paying $0.086 per terabyte gigabyte. Storage has become even cheaper — unthinkably cheap. The previous relevant price point was $100 for a 1TB drive, which meant $0.100 per gigabyte (a dime).
A gigabyte is now cheaper than a dime! I just didn’t think it would happen this fast. I remember when a dime would get you 100MB, and I thought that was a lot. Okay, let me not kid myself: I remember when a dime would get you 1MB or less. Now you get 1GB, which is 1,000 times the storage capacity, for less than the same tiny dime. Amazing!
If you’re looking for extra storage capacity, now would be a good time. If I hadn’t already filled up my main Drobo with 1TB drives, I’d jump all over these, because they’re definitely at the right price point, especially now that they’ve been cleared for use with the Drobo once more.
While I’m on the subject of good deals, let me remind you of my guide to getting good deals on hard drives. I mention it because Micro Center happens to be selling the Seagate FreeAgent Xtreme 1.5TB (a triple interface external hard drive) for $149.99. This means that you’re paying $20 for the enclosure over the price of the hard drive alone.
Remember, this is a triple interface drive (USB 2.0/FW400/eSATA), and that means the enclosure is very inexpensive. Instead of buying one of those DIY enclosures that may or may not work (I’ve been there), you’ll get something that’s guaranteed to work, or you can return it.
Raoul Pop 
Pingback: Storage drops below 7 cents per gigabyte « Raoul Pop
Pingback: Predictions about computer drives in the future by Raoul Pop
Forgot to mention about the Seagate enclosures. I’ve only had one Seagate enclosed drive so far, a 250GB USB 2.0 model that was stackable. I used it on Windows for a couple of years and found it to be reliable, on both XP and Vista. But I hear lots of good things about the FreeAgent enclosures, people seem to really like them.
LikeLike
Jeremy, I own about 4-5 Seagate hard drives. I haven’t had them fail on me yet, and it’s been a few years. I also own about 12 WD drives, and they haven’t failed me yet either. Generally speaking, I’ve found the Seagate drives don’t get as hot as the WD drives, but they’re a little louder.
Historically speaking, it seems they usually need firmware updates. I remember when Seagate first came out with drives that had a 32MB cache. People were complaining that in real world testing, the drives only used about 8MB out of that cache, until they applied the latest firmware. The thing to do then, since you can’t update a drive’s firmware while it’s inside a Drobo, is to get one of those inexpensive SATA to USB wires (costs about $15), turn your Drobo off, unplug it, take out the drives, connect them via that cable and update the firmware as needed.
LikeLike
Wow! Finger hovering over the button now…. but then I will have to get a Drobo to stick ’em in.
How have your experiences been with the Seagate drives? I know some of the slick looking enclosures had weird issues with Linux — they would go to sleep and not wake up until you disconnected/reconnected the cable.
LikeLike
Greg, you’re right, thanks! I had an inkling in the back of my head that the figures were too good to be true… or maybe it’s just wishful thinking. At any rate, it’s a great deal indeed.
LikeLike
Raoul, Check your math. I think you mean less than a dime per Gigabyte, NOT Terabyte.
Still a great deal…makes me wish I would have waited 3 months before upgrading my NAS… 🙂
LikeLike