Real Gentlemen: Budget IDE Hard Drives — THG.RU

Introduction

During the last months, the hard drive companies mutually topped each other in terms of per-platter capacity. After 15 GB and 20 GB, most companies now offer hard drives at around 30 GB per platter running at 7,200 rpm. 5,400 rpm models already store 40 GB per platter, and new records could still be established this year. We received three representatives from the newest generation. Maxtor’s 536DX series (4W060H4), Seagate’s U6 series (ST360020A) and the Western Digital WD600AB. All of them have a total capacity of 60 GB.

Former IDE hard drive reviews at Tom’s Hardware Guide have always dealt with 7,200 rpm models, the so-called performance drives. Naturally, the budged drives cannot keep pace with them, as they usually run at 5,400 rpm, resulting in slower data transfer rates and longer access times. Comparing apples and oranges would be quite unreasonable, thus we did not include 7,200 drives in the benchmark charts.

Budget Drives

Since 1999, high-end computers have usually been equipped with hard drives running at 7,200 rpm rather than 5,400 rpm. Although a higher rpm means increased noise level and temperatures, the performance gain is remarkable. However, the user still has to wait for the HD during times of intense read or write access.

Although many of our readers are well-versed in technology, there are probably some less-experienced users out there who sometimes encounter the following problems when buying hardware components: First, they are on a limited budget, which therefore limits their choice of features for a particular product. Second, they may not have anybody to turn to for advice on what to buy, making the computer dealer, whom you may or may not trust, the last resort.

Assuming you’re on a limited budget, you might be interested in these three drives, which are low-cost models from Maxtor, Seagate and Western Digital. Usually, such hard drives are used for the pre-assembled computers. Even if you’ve got a larger budget to play with, there are several reasons that you might opt for the 5,400 rpm drive over the 7,200 rpm drive:

• Noise Level
  Hard drives are one of the factors contributing to the noise generated by your PC. Although the latest 7,200 rpm drives are surprisingly quiet, most 5,400 rpm models are even quieter.
• Temperature
  As the friction inside the drive is much less at only 5,400 rpm, these drives will naturally heat up less.
• Backup or Long-Term Storage
  Collecting MP3s or even video files from the Internet requires a lot of storage space. That’s why many people consider adding a second drive to their system which will only be used to store data, but not for running applications or the operating system. These lower cost hard drives are ideal for such purposes.

Maxtor 536DX (4W060H4)

The 536DX series looks like any other Maxtor drive. Its appearance has not changed for years.

The Maxtor 536 DX series runs at a constant 5,400 rpm and is available in capacities of 30, 40, 60, 80 and even 100 GB. 2 MB buffer memory are present to speed up repeated or anticipated access. We measured a surface temperature of 41°C, which is is quite good — this series of drives won’t heat up your tower case unnecessarily.

While other manufacturers add a protective covering to the PCB underneath the drive, Maxtor’s is left unprotected.

For more information about this drive, please go to Maxtor’s website.

Seagate U6 ST360020A

Seagate’s U6 family is protected by black rubber.

The U6 series is the current low-cost hard drive family from Seagate. Running at 5,400 rpm and with 2 MB cache, they provide average performance at low prices.

The rubber casing also protects the bottom of the drive. All jumper settings are indicated by the label at the top.

For more information about this drive, please go to Seagate’s website.

Western Digital WD600AB

Without the label, you could not possibly distinguish the 600AB from other actual WD drives.

The Western Digital 600AB has already been available for some time. That may be the reason for its low price: While the Maxtor and Seagate drives cost around $ 150, the Western Digital can sometimes be purchased for less than $ 130.

The Business and Highend Disk WinMarks are excellent tools for determing the performance of a hard drive with real applications. This is where Western Digital’s strength lies, rather than in the area of data transfer speed.

Though the bottom is not directly protected, Western Digital puts the ICs on the upper side of the PCB.

The bottom of the drive is not directly protected, so Western Digital puts the ICs on the upper side of the PCB

For more information about this drive, please go to the Western Digital website.

Test Setup

Benchmarks

Data Transfer Diagrams: Budget Drives

Maxtor 536DX 4W060H4

As you can see, the Maxtor drive starts at approximately 28 MB/s and descends to 16 MB/s. That can be called average performance today. Due to verifying algorithms, the write performance clearly lags behind the read performance.

Seagate ST360020A

Seagate’s budget drive generates a «hectic» graphic. The data transfer performance does not descend steadily, but erratically. At the end of the medium, the read performance drops to even < 10 MB/s at some points — this drive is unsuitable for appliations that require a constant data stream. Write performance is also quite low, but hey, this 60 GB drive that only costs $ 140.

Western Digital WD600AB

The maximum data transfer performance in the graphic later on is not great, as it drops to 26 MB/s immediately. Although this drive might look fast at first, a glance at the performance diagram makes it clear that its speed is only average.

Data Transfer Performance

It’s easy to see that the drives running at 5,400 rpm have difficulties exceeding 30 MB/s. Both the Maxtor 536DX and WD’s 600AB fail this to surpass this number, Seagate’s U6 series (ST360020A) provides 31,600 KB/s.

Disk Access Time

HD Tach does not only return seek time results like many other benchmark programs, but the full access time that consists of seek time, plus head positioning, plus rotational latency (that’s the time you have to wait until the right sector passes the read/write heads). The Maxtor drive is clearly faster than the Seagate and Western Digital drives.

Application Performance

Here you can see what I’ve already mentioned above: The Western Digital drives regularly achieve good application results, although the data transfer performance and access time does not seem to be too fast at the first look. If you run standard applications like Word, Excel, your Browser and similar stuff, this WD drives is as fast as some 7,200 rpm drives — at clearly lower noise emissions.

Current performance drives score approximately 20,000 to 23,000 points. In that respect, the three performance drives do not look bad in this benchmark. The difference between 5,400 and 7,200 rpm does not seem to be that much here.

Disk Temperature

Please consider that the temperature in our lab was summerly 26°C instead of 21-23°C that we normally have during the rest of the year. Hence it’s safe to discount 2 or 3 degrees from the test result.

Disk Noise Level

As the decibel scale is logarithmic, I decided not to start the graphic at 0 but at 20, just to make clear that the difference in noise level is sometimes bigger than the numbers might suggest. All three budget drives stay below 50 db(A), which is a good result. Particularly the Maxtor drive is very quiet.

Conclusion

The largest IDE hard drive has been the Maxtor 536DX (4W100H6). Some weeks ago, Western Digital released their 100 GB drive as well — even at 7,200 rpm. With the per-platter capacity of 40 GB, it would be no problem to assemble drives with a capacity of 120 or even 160 GB. Maxtor and Western Digital are preparing to launch such drives soon.

There were several hurdles to overcome with the IDE interface: 504 MB, 2 GB, 8 GB and later 32 GB. The next limitation is caused by the LBA (logical block addressing) of the UltraATA standard which works with 28 Bits. At 228 Sectors with 512 Bytes each, the maximum disk capacity is 137.4 billion bytes (or 128 GB). On September 3, Maxtor and some others introduced UltraATA/133, which is not only meant to speed up IDE performance up to 133 MB/s, but also will remove the 128 GB limitation.

Although UltraATA/133 is widely supported and certainly will replace ATA/100 for the time before Serial ATA finally arrives, not the whole industry supports it. While VIA, SiS and ALi are going to support the new protocol in their next chipset generations, Intel as well as Seagate and IBM prefer to wait for Serial ATA. At least, ATA/133 is downwards compatible, which allows to run the new drives with an ATA/100 or ATA/66 interface — at reduced performance.