Slashdot Mirror

I don't need 400GB, hell I don't need 160GB; I need a hard drive that is more reliable

I need about 500GB and something that is reliable. I'm looking at 3 250GB drives with raid5 which should be close enough to 500GB after the hardrive manufacturers stretching of the facts and formatting.

My question is, where do you go to buy a harddrive nowadays at a good price. I've been looking at pricewatch for sometime, and I realized today that the prices there are too low to be true. Plus if you look at the feedback its miserable.

Does anyone know of a good place to buy harddrives at a decent honest price? (Meaning the price I pay, not the before we jack up the price price, or the charge your credit card and tell you its sold out, oh wanna buy an upgraded part price)

That is cheap.

Pricewatch
lists the CPU alone for roughly $70.

I was thinking the same thing as you, until I noticed one thing. If you're using one of the base models, it IS cheaper, but to upgrade the specs it's more expensive as a developer, so if you're going to be adding HDs, RAM or a Superdrive, compare the two before you compare. Might not be worth the $99 for the discount... just a friendly hint.
That is what this is for ;)

First, decide what parts to use by looking at Tom's hardware or some other site you trust that builds extreme machines for testing the latest components. This is where you get your template.

Then go to Pricewatch and maybe froogle to find the lowest prices on the components while double checking the vendors reputation on Reseller Ratings.

Finally, have a friend who has a little experience come over and put that beauty together.

I spec'ed out a top of the line Alienware machine against building my own with the same or better components and cut the price by more than half.

What's wrong with 6*2GB @$148ea = 12GB @$900?

However, if you're looking for something custom, there's just no better way than building it yourself. I recommend picking up a nice VIA EPIA 800 from CWLinux preloaded with their LinuxBIOS and toss in one or two WiFi cards (one A, one G).

Some examples of the kind of flexibility this gives you is offering IPv6 support, packet tunneling to hide your upstream, or setting up a custom website which all new users of the hotspot will be given when they try to access any website until they've activated their service (EULA, payment, whatever).

The minimum the hardware for this is going to run around $350. With only a few extra features, it can easily run over $500. That $40 802.11a AP from Pricewatch sure looks like a good deal now, doesn't it?

Opteron 250's are pricy, but actually $900 if you check Pricewatch. If you look under CPUs, you will see the Opteron's. Availability will have an impact on prices, but AMDs and Intels release schedule will have more of an impact.

A few people have made the comment that Google can do this because 99% of the people will only use a few MBs of storage anyway. Reasonable theory, but here's another idea -- it doesn't matter if everyone uses a massive amount of storage.

First, figure out how many people there are in the world that might potentially use Gmail. Then figure out what is the potential maximum amount of unique data each of those people could generate on a daily basis. Then determine the size of the redundant information that could pass through the Gmail servers.

Note that a huge percentage of emails and attachments are sent to multiple recipients. For each piece of email or attachment compute and store a unique hash. Each account consists of only a list of hashes and some header metadata. This redundant information will significantly reduce the total storage space.

A quick seach finds this Berkeley study that suggests that there were about 400 PB of email (unique) generated last year. Assuming that you can save 1 GB of data for the fully-loaded cost of $1 (US), storing all of the internet's annual email traffic costs $500M annually in the worst case.

The best case is significantly better than that, as you can:

a) compress text by up to 80%
b) store every mail only once
c) store every large binary only once
d) add storage as needed, not up-front
e) reduce the cost of storage over time

This is off-the-cuff, but Google is looking at maybe a $50M annual investment in storage to store all the email on the internet, even if everyone uses it. They don't even need a storage limit. Period.

Now that this news is now on /. (and due to the basic economics principle of supply and demand), this new burner's price is going to skyrocket, or NEC is going to go to a measure that's sure to *cough*happen*cough* piss people off, discontinuation. -Xeon

for my technically challenged friends (read still running windows), i have them jump on pricewatch for hardware firewall/routers. they can be typically purchased for about $25. at that cost (or less through software), there's no reason why everyone can't be protected.

for my technically challenged friends (read still running windows), i have them jump on pricewatch for hardware firewall/routers. they can be typically purchased for about $25. at that cost (or less through software), there's no reason why everyone can't be protected.

You ask what the best way to network a neighborhood. Why ask without telling us about the arrangement of the houses. Density is everything for determining the best answers. Needless to say this is complex question. Technologies change. Spend your money on reusable parts and skimp on expensive technically sensitive parts.

If the houses can be clustered around (100 Meters from) a neighborhood switch in a coms locker, use cat5e or better for IP and voice services. TV is cheaper on coax. This way the neighborhood can use whatever is cheapest for the BaseT IP connection. If the density of houses is lower, use Cablemodems or fiber to each house from one central coms locker. Fiber and CMTS/Cable Modems are expensive for the bandwidth.

My recommendation:
Build a coms locker for each 100Meter radius cluster of houses. Connect the lockers with a backbone of fiber and coax for TV. Connect the houses with Cat5e and coax for TV to the lockers. Lockers will need electrical power for Gigabit switches and coax-TV signal boosters. At the lockers, use IP switches to avoid sniffers, no firewalls or wifi because someone will have to maintain it. Put these burdens on the home owners. The lockers should require no maintenance and recover gracefully from power outages.

Today 100baseTX (100Mb) hardware is cheapest. Tomorrow Gigabit 1000baseT (1000Mb) hardware could be much better with future lower price. With $5 10/100Mb nics or $30 Gigabit nics on PriceWatch.com, I would go Gigabit, but all the gigabit hubs and switches are more expensive too. Gigabit switches at $75 vs. 10/100 switches at $40. Cat5e is $54 per 1000 feet (304Meters) of riser jacket. Labor is expensive, and replacing 100Mb hardware later is somewhat expensive, so go gigabit now.

Digging conduits is expensive and dangerious but much more secure and much bigger bandwidth than the alternatives. Conduit is adaptable and has long 30+ year life span. Make sure all utilites (gas, electric, telephone, cableTV, water, sewer) are documented before trenching. Use a walk-behind trencher to place conduit. Use conduit because you can add and replace low voltage wire, fibre, coax, without re-digging trenches. Running 3 Cat5e drops to each house will allow 1 cable for 4 telephone lines, 1 IP network connection, and 1 extra cable (backup, more bandwidth or telephone lines). Since the labor is the expensive part, put the spair/extra/unassigned cable in and conduit from each house to the locker.

Hanging wires from telephone poles is cheaper, but lightning, storms, political aprroval and ugliness are very big problems. Consider power over Ethernet for any 100Mb remote hubs and repeaters. I don't believe PoE will work with Gigabit, because Gigabit uses all 8 conductors where 10/100Mb uses only 4 conductors.

These conduits need to arrive in each house at a demarcation point, typically a coms panel. This coms panel is where all the homes coax and cat5 drops connect. Here is where the hubs switches and routers should be placed. Place the tv coax splitter here as well. Leviton sells a very expensive ($100) home coms panel. It is quick it that is what you want. I would rather take the time and crimp rj45 plugs on the wires so that they go straight into the home network switches. If you have the money and less time, buy a 110 punch down block and buy your patch cables for connecting blocks to the home network switch.

Home network security is very important. Use a firewall appliance to connect your conduit datapipe to your home network at your coms panel. Unfortunately there is not a gigabit version of the D-link Di-604 10/100 broadband router/firewall. This makes it more difficult to secure each homes gigabit data network economically. Centralized neighborhood security is expensive and t

I had a system that was pretty similar to yours, a 750MHz AMD Athlon Thunderbird. It was pretty fast, but didn't multitask well. So all at once, I bought parts to build a new system. With all I'd learned from my previous experiences, I was able to build one that was extremely reliable. I bought an ASUS motherboard (Very Important!) a P4 (though if I bought one now you can bet it would be an AMD64 of some variety), a gig of dual-channel DDR made by micron from the lowest bidder (pricewatch.com,a Maxtor hard drive (high performance, no reliablility problems), and then a basic run-of-the-mill video card. Got a 19" monitor, a CDRW, and moved my old hard drive over for extra space.

Now multi-tasking works fantastic, no matter what programs I'm using. I am really pleased with it. My computer performs much better than the average off-the-shelf PC, thanks to the carefully selected proc, memory, and hard drive.

And it was also a learning experience. So, in closing, I would say, don't be discouraged by past experiences - you can still beat the new PC market by building your own computer. You just need to do proper planning. Consider all your options, and put together a killer system. Good luck!

I've never actually owned a PC, so it might be a good learning experience to put one together... hrm.

Yeah, those Athlon FX processors are really cheap. Maybe I should dump my celeron for one.

I'd love to see some program that does "reverse VRAM reclaiming" so those of us who don't need 128mb of video RAM power can get some of that ram back for compiling or something.

Okay... that WAS geeky.

DVD Price Search is the pricewatch equivalent for DVDs, but my personal favorite of the bunch is DeepDiscountDVD. It can take two weeks to receive your order, but the prices and selection are generally unbeatable. Free shipping.

Pricewatch! its the best. pricewatch.

Froogle is pretty good too.


But never buy from tiger direct! they have done many bad things to people, myself included (overcharding, damaged merchendise, etc). Same with best buy, except if by damaged merchandise, you mean selling a geforce2 in a raedeon 8500 box (this happened to my friend a couple years ago).

Windows comes for free on almost any new computer unless you go out of your way to buy one without it (which is next to impossible).

Incorrect. The price of Windows is included with the computer. More accurately, you're claiming that the price of Windows comes bundled in with the cost of the computer, and you have to go out of your way to avoid paying for a copy of Windows with every new PC. This is what you may hear being referred to as the "Microsoft Tax".

Also my campus bookstore sells copies of Windows XP Pro for $20. When coupled with a $20 copy of Office 2003 Pro, there's not much reason for my to use Linux for my office computing needs.

While not impossible, this is highly unlikely. According to Pricewatch, XP Pro Academic Upgrade is currently running $68 ($80 for the boxed version).

More likely is that your university has joined Microsoft's Campus Software Programs (either willingly or because it was coerced by Microsoft; more details if you want). Essentially, the students all pay $30-$70 per semester and, in return, they can go to their local bookstore, show proof of ID, and get an upgrade version of Windows XP (read your license carefully!), and one copy of MS Office. Other software may also be included (at my uni, Publisher and Visual Studio are also included). You then go down to the bookstore and plunk down more money for software you probably don't need anyway on top of the per-semester payments!

Pretty sweet deal if you ask me. Well, for Microsoft anyway--universities shell out even more money for software they likey don't need (as you pointed out, Windows is gonna be installed anyway), and the school will find it even harder to switch away from Microsoft (since that'd require recalling (and auditing the recall of!) every piece of software given out under the programme).

What's worse is hearing people, being fleeced $150-$350 over 5 years,--not counting summer school-- for software they don't need anyway, and hearing them say it's such a great deal because they get Windows XP Pro for $7!

Your box will also run faster, as you won't be mimicking hardware functionality in software.

It will also be easier to combine 2 or more modem connections in a low-end box for faster speed.

I agree - we use InFocus projectors here at work (X1's can be had for around $925 online including shipping - check Pricewatch under "Presentation"... On those "movie nights" at work we run them off a laptop with audio piped into audio equipment we all bring in from home. Awesome picture - and a much better use of the equipment than it gets from the Marketing guys ;-)

Of course, you can still purchase a $3299 computer and spend an extra $9340 to max out your RAM (at 16 GB).

Admittedly, if you bought the RAM separately it'd be cheaper- but 8 sticks of the cheapest available on pricewatch would be about 4k, still more expensive than the computer.

The real value for me in Apple's Access Points is that you are getting a great Cisco WAP for a lot less, Cisco's radio's have some of the best sensitivity around. Add a nice antenna to a Apple WAP and you have one of the best WAPs you can buy.

Evidence:

• CF 2GB cartridge for $180
• USB CF readers for $7
• ATA CF reader (caveat: most desktop ATA chipsets don't hot-swap well)

Evidence:

• CF 2GB cartridge for $180
• USB CF readers for $7
• ATA CF reader (caveat: most desktop ATA chipsets don't hot-swap well)

Same here, but not because it's Iomega, it's because of the price: "Iomega said it will charge $60 a disk..."

35 gigs for $60? Why don't I just buy a USB 2.0 enclosure and 40gig hard drive. About the same price and probably more reliable. Or if I'm lazy I can get the 40gig drive already in a enclosure for ~$60 shipped. Least I don't have to buy the $400 drive.

Sorry Iomega, but too little too late.

Check out EE Times article on the drive. Of course, you could always get a 60GB drive for less ($47 shipped) from pricewatch, but if Iomega can ramp this up quicker, it'll get price-competitive again.

Then you're looking for this. 702x480 30fps 6mbps (that's high quality) MPEG2. Fills 512megs in 10 minutes. Not quite 720x480, and sorry no 60fps (why 60fps?? that'd take a crap load of space), but it's darn near close.

too bad it uses SD, if it was compactflash II compatible they'd have a real winner on their hands, with 2gig CFII selling for only $150 while 1gig SD is over double that.

Then you're looking for this. 702x480 30fps 6mbps (that's high quality) MPEG2. Fills 512megs in 10 minutes. Not quite 720x480, and sorry no 60fps (why 60fps?? that'd take a crap load of space), but it's darn near close.

too bad it uses SD, if it was compactflash II compatible they'd have a real winner on their hands, with 2gig CFII selling for only $150 while 1gig SD is over double that.

The price of hardware has come down so much that it is far less than the cost of the OS to get the hardware

pricewatch

1. The artists who created the soundtrack for the Matrix was paid to create the soundtrack for the Matrix. Any other sales are gravy on top of that. Music IS sold twice. It was sold in the box office right along with everything else.

2. I actually watch the movie more than listen to the sound track. You can't price something based on how much the consumer is going to use it. I use my PDA more than my cell phone, but the phone costed more, even with the rebate. If I had an old car in perfect condition sitting in my garage, unused, I may still cost more than a pinto that gets used daily.

By my rationale, most PC hardware is under $50 for this very reason. Look at pricewatch.com. There is COMPETITION. I can buy a mouse for $5, which is far more complicated to duplicate than a CD. Remember, the initial CD or mouse may cost millions to create, but once the manufacturing plant has been paid for, the cost of duplication (paying workers, materials, etc) is all that is required. When you sell millions of units (and there are more Linkin Park albums being sold than any one particular make/model of mouse), you can spread that initial cost out over all of the units, which is why a 1200+ AMD chip is selling for $30.

How much does 512 MB of RAM for those machines cost again?

OK, skip walmart and go here, buy your system, and download/purchase your favorite distro and install. It seems there are some even better systems for less than the Wal-Mart price.

On the other hand the Xbox is in a (slightly) smaller case, consumes significantly less power than most PCs, and has excellent TV out. So if you are building a cluster, you probably won't want Xboxes, although they are pretty much disposable and they're fairly small. If you're building a HTPC for output, an Xbox is an excellent choice. If you want one for input, you need a PC. Ultimately the Xbox is only going to be the right decision when you want to use a TV for output.

On the other hand the Xbox is in a (slightly) smaller case, consumes significantly less power than most PCs, and has excellent TV out. So if you are building a cluster, you probably won't want Xboxes, although they are pretty much disposable and they're fairly small. If you're building a HTPC for output, an Xbox is an excellent choice. If you want one for input, you need a PC. Ultimately the Xbox is only going to be the right decision when you want to use a TV for output.

Humor aside, it is wild how cheap a cluster can be these days..

$7500 for 35Ghz/3.2GB is downright expensive these days. For example, a 2.16Ghz Athlon 3000+ machine w/256M ram & 40GB HD is listed on pricewatch at $229.

That's 16 machines to get 35Ghz/4GB at a price of $3664. I know quite a few people that have spent that amount or close to it for a single machine! This is part of why I love computers, constant progress.. the next generation will laugh at us paying $3660 dollars (even with inflation) for 35Ghz/4GB.

if it's anything like it was a couple of years ago i think pricewatch takes into account international shopping, but this could have changed

You're talking about creating a trusted space for reinstall/diagnostics. Personally, on my Win98 box, I have a directory called c:\win98\ which has all the cab files. The hard disk space for a few CD images is fairly disposable these days. With OEM 200G IDE drives starting around $120, that's enough space for a few CD images to be set aside for a backup/restore in the case of something disastrous. Plus if your virii/worms can't touch that other partition, you have a "trusted" way to work on restoring your system in the case something bad happens without having to do the fdisk/format/reinstall sequence. Even if you had to do just reformat/reinstall, it goes a lot faster copying frm disk-to-disk instead of from a cdrom/dvd.

My biggest concern is that if I purchase a new computer, I do want the media to reinstall the software should something bad happen, or my hard disk die and I replace it with a superiour one to the OEM drive they used.

Having attempted twice in the past to boot Linux from CF, I would not recommend including the procedure in an article. Hardly plug-n-ATI, there are few Distros that will fit on a consumer level CF card, and even fewer motherboards that will boot them. I've personally never managed it. That's not to say that it can't be done (it can, obviously), just that it is probably out of the scope of the article. I certainly wouldn't want to have to deal with the forums if they recommended it.

Boot from the HDD, then spin it down and live in RAM. Unless you are uploading pictures, your picture frame server will be quiet. Of course, I do want $parent_poster to try it, succeed, get swept up, and release an solid CF Distro based upon Debian that doesn't have me tearing my hair out.

BTW, Pricewatch lists 256MB CF cards for 45 dollars, shipped. That should save you the hassle of bidding.

Having attempted twice in the past to boot Linux from CF, I would not recommend including the procedure in an article. Hardly plug-n-ATI, there are few Distros that will fit on a consumer level CF card, and even fewer motherboards that will boot them. I've personally never managed it. That's not to say that it can't be done (it can, obviously), just that it is probably out of the scope of the article. I certainly wouldn't want to have to deal with the forums if they recommended it.

Boot from the HDD, then spin it down and live in RAM. Unless you are uploading pictures, your picture frame server will be quiet. Of course, I do want $parent_poster to try it, succeed, get swept up, and release an solid CF Distro based upon Debian that doesn't have me tearing my hair out.

BTW, Pricewatch lists 256MB CF cards for 45 dollars, shipped. That should save you the hassle of bidding.

No Xeon MP as fast as 3.0 GHz or with the 4MB cache is available via pricewatch.
The fastest Xeon MP processor available they list is 2.8 GHz with 2MB cache, for $3788
A single Opteron 848 processor costs $1469

Oh, lookie, the AMD processor is less than half the price of a Xeon product inferior to the one that article benchmarked it against. Retract your lies.

No Xeon MP as fast as 3.0 GHz or with the 4MB cache is available via pricewatch.
The fastest Xeon MP processor available they list is 2.8 GHz with 2MB cache, for $3788
A single Opteron 848 processor costs $1469

Oh, lookie, the AMD processor is less than half the price of a Xeon product inferior to the one that article benchmarked it against. Retract your lies.

However the Opteron is HALF the price of a Xeon!

Heh, you haven't been to Pricewatch lately. An Opteron 248 is $949 compared with $821 for a 3.2ghz Xeon (1mb cache). Dell has the 2mb Xeon listed at $1,499. We know the street price will be a couple hundred lower.

AMD can't afford to sell at HALF the price of Intel.

The 1Mb cache chips are very expensive, however regular 512Kb 2.4 Xeons can be had for under $200. The cache is very nice, but on a desktop workstation it is probably cost prohibitive not to mention, overkill.

Even if that were true, it would be because PC133 isn't as common as it used to be. All new systems are using DDR (for the most part) nowadays, so manufacturers are not making as much PC133. Low supply == Higher Cost.

That being said, shuttle yourself over to Pricewatch to find yourself 128MB PC133 sticks for $15.

What moron said the price is|was $119? Even a click on the home page takes you to a screen presenting you with a $79.79 price tag, making froogle or PriceWatch unnecessary.

Not sure what happened to the link in that last posting...

This is just one more reason not to buy RAM or harddrives from apple. They're overpriced. Check dealram.com, dealmac.com, & pricewatch.com instead.

3x changers @ $700 each + 1 manager @ $1800 = $3900. More expensive than 4x250GB drives + computer

250GB HD == $166

4 * $166 = $664
that leaves $3236 for a PC and shipping. I'd say it can be done.

From Rob's Ferrari gush: Part of me wishes this notebook was fueled by the Athlon64 rather than the Athlon XP-M chip.

Heh.

Heh heh.

Heh heh ha ha hee hee ho!

My brand-new Yugo can punk his Ferrari.

Maybe.