I have no idea why, but disk prices are falling like a rock. Two weeks ago I needed a new disk to transfer all my Homestead data to when I left the company, and I found the Seagate 7200.10 400G SATA (Perpendicular) on NewEgg for $209. A little cross check against a local place (Central Computer) and I found the same disk for $189. Done! Then I go to Fry’s last night to get some things for my new home office setup and I find the non-Perpendicular version of the same disk, the Seagate 7200.9 400G SATA retail package dropped in price from $189 to a mind bending $119! I bought 2 on the spot, which I intend to combine with my 7200.10 for a 800GB RAIDZ pool at home.

So here’s the question… whats going on? Why are these drives dropping in price so fast? I’ve got to say, the 7200.10 performance is just blistering. I was pushing a sustained 40MB/s to the drive and it was angry that it couldn’t get more. I’m really excited about this new RAIDZ setup that I’ll have to replace my growing collection of disk, all used via ZFS, to something much more stable and consistant, not to mention high performance. I’m thinking about buying another 1 or 2 to put in a hot-swap bay so that I can have an offline backup disk to swap in and out every week.

Need disk? Nows a good time to buy. Buy the Seagate 400GB 7100.9 SATA-II drive here, Check out the Seagate Spec’s page here.