ATA Drives Nosedive Again

Just when we thought Serial ATA (SATA) drives were going to catch up--price-wise--with parallel ATA, retail prices for the high-capacity IDE drives plunged once again, this time 7.5%, down to under $.79/GB for raw disk space. SATA drives also dropped, but not so dramatically, edging down just 2.3%.

Tape drives held steady for the most part, with the exception of Quantum's SDLT 600 model, which fell 3.4%. Tape media, on the other hand, rose across the board, with the greatest gain (8.9%) being posted by the cheapest media--LTO-1. At press time, it was unclear whether these price shifts were just an anomaly of the data collecting process, or indicative of a larger economic trend.

Ultra SCSI hard drives

Ultra SCSI tape drives

Media