King Of Capacity: DiamondMax 80 — THG.RU

What do you want to store today?

For the first time in computer history there isn’t a lot of software available that would take full advantage of the latest high speed processors. Only a few years ago, the industry was forced to develop faster processors in order to meet software demands.

Something similar seems to happen in the hard drive arena as well right now. Let us leave out the professional users and focus on the mainstream market, which is the target of Maxtor’s new 80 GB drive. Today it’s quite a task to fill a 20 GB hard drive with applications only. Even if you install 30 programs at 200 MB each, and 10 games with 500 MB each, you will only need 11 GB of disk space.

The largest file types are of course audio, video, graphics or large data bases, consuming much more space than ordinary documents. Particularly the popular MP3 format is densely populating hard drives on every continent. Faster Internet access will automatically enable people to download more or larger files, which is another reason why the demands for storage are increasing at a steady pace.

Within the next months, more and more users will have Internet access fast enough to enable the next step in the development of the Internet. Connections will allow us to run applications directly from web servers, removing more and more limits. Who knows how long it will take until you can download a whole movie from the Internet in only 10 minutes?

Technical Specifications

UltraATA/100 Whitepaper

In the last years, the IDE drive capacity crown was owned either by IBM or by Maxtor. After IBM’s release of their 16.8 GB drive, Maxtor came with 17 GB. The next generation offered 25 GB (IBM) and 27 GB (Maxtor). After that, IBM offered up to 37 GB, and Maxtor countered with 40 GB.

So far, IBM’s DTLA drive at 75 GB held the record of the largest IDE hard drive. The DiamondMax is now reaching two new records at once. It is not only the largest IDE drive but also the largest mechanical disk drive on the market. Even the largest SCSI drives don’t supply more than 76 GB, which won’t change until next spring.

Test Setup

Most of you should already be familiar with the test setup. I changed the formerly used 810 chipset motherboard to this 815 one in order to have an UltraATA/100 controller on-board.

Benchmarks: Data Transfer Performance

For the last tests I used HD Tach 2.61 from TCD Labs, because this program gives you both read and write performance in one single graph. The alternative is ZD’s Disc Inspection Test (WinBench 99), which I used for the 6 hard drive review three months ago. Unfortunately the performance graph is only a one pixel wide line, making it difficult to resize the chart to a lower resolution without losing information.

It seems as if HD Tach is not able to handle the 80 GB of the Maxtor drive, as the program hangs after klicking the start button. I hope I’ll be able to add this chart shortly.

Even though the new Maxtor drive only runs at 5.400 rpm, it is still faster than all drives I have tested three months ago. Under these circumstances I think the drive did not miss its target by staying slightly below 30 MB/s.

This high data transfer speed could be achieved thanks to the high density data recording. As mentioned above, Maxtor is the second company to offer drives at 20 GB per platter.

Benchmarks: Disk Access Time

In Windows 2000, the DiamondMax 80’s access time is excellent. Under Windows 98, all 7.200 rpm drives are faster. However, the 80 GB drive is still faster than the Western Digital 45 GB drive.

Naturally, a 5.400 rpm disk drive has to have higher access times than 7.200 or faster models. The reason is quite simple: After the drive located the desired location on the platter (the right cylinder), it will position the read/write heads. Before data can be read or written, the proper sector has to pass underneath the heads. Naturally, a faster spinning drive will have shorter delays.

Many people believe that drives with huge capacities have to have longer access times. Actually, the access time practically does harly differ within a drive family. For example, those DiamondMax drives are available with 2, 3 or 4 platters, resulting in capacities of 40, 60 or 80 GB. Adding another platter does not increase the search distances, since every platter has its own heads.

Benchmarks: Disk WinBench 99

Thanks to the large cache size of 2 MB and the fast data transfer speed, Maxtor’s 98196H8 scores very well.

Benchmarks: Content Creation Winstone 2000

Temperature, Noise and Vibration

At the rotation speed of 5.400 rpm, the Maxtor drive should stay cool in most situations. Temperature is probably the main reason why the DiamondMax series is not running at the 7.200 rpm that Maxtor planned to use for its largest drive. With its four platters, 7.200 rpm would have made the drive significantly hotter.

The 98196H8 is also one of the quietest hard drives around. Lying on the table, the drive noticably whistled. After installing it into a computer case, the noise disappeared almost entirely. Vibrations are also no issue with this product; the drive runs very smoothly.

Jumper

All Maxtor IDE drives have only one jumper which you have to set for single or master drive mode. If you want the hard disk to operate as slave, just remove JP50.

Conclusion

I don’t expect this drive to be at a low price point, as it is definitely one of the latest state-of-the-art hard disks. It is fast and really huge, but I doubt that a lot of home users will really need this drive right now.

Thanks to the low prices for CD-R media, I cannot see much sense in spending a lot of money for a hard drive of that size right now. As usual, prices will drop faster than your income possibly ever rises, so I’d recommend to go for such a drive the moment you really need it. Adding a second hard drive to your system is very easy and can always be done. Still, people that do a lot of video editing will appreciate the size of this Maxtor product.

The 98196H8 is a great solution for people with high capacity demands and low budgets. Using four of those drives in an IDE RAID configuration will either give you 320 GB stripped at zero data safety, or 160 GB stripped, while the data is mirrored on two other drives. A comparable SCSI RAID will at least be twice as expensive. There are certainly some disadvantages of IDE RAID vs. SCIS RAID, but in my opinion, IDE RAID systems are becoming the best solution for semi-professional purposes.

Maxtor has fortified the claim to be one of the driving forces in the hard drive sector once more. The DiamondMax 80 is a very persuasive product, no matter which model you want to buy. I’m already looking forward to a model running at 7.200 rpm.