DiamondMax Plus 45GB Hard Drive
The DiamondMax Plus 45GB Drive could be considered as the successor for Maxtor’s DiamondMax Plus 40 drive. The DM Plus 45 contains three data platters in contrast to the DM Plus 40’s four. However incorporating 15GB per platter Maxtor has given this drive a total of 45GB.
The reason for reducing the platter size to three is to get a competitive advantage in the drive’s access times. Fact is greater the number of Data Platters, higher the number of read/write arms used. This ultimately results with performance drops in access times. This is quite evident with IBM’s 75GXP series, which consists of 5 data platters. In contrast to the DM Plus 45’s 12.2ms access time the 75GXP delivers a 13.5ms access time. Considering the specs of the drive I must say this is truly a high performance drive. With an average access time of 8.7ms it is almost as fast as high-end drives. Furthermore the 2MB 100MHz SDRAM cache buffer, 7200RPM spindle speed, ATA/100 interface, all add to increase the drive’s performance significantly. The drive is also equipped with Maxtor’s Dual Wave Twin Processor technology, which is supposed to give a processing speed increase of around ten-fold.
I have mentioned before that one of the main disadvantages of a 7200RPM drive is the amount of heat it produces. For those of you who have very cramped up cases this could be a major issue. However you shouldn’t give much thought to this fact when choosing a drive today as there are a wide range of coolers out their to meet individual requirements, so there’s no point on lingering with this issue too much.
Talking more on features, the DM plus 45 is also incorporated with Maxtor’s ShockBlock and MaxSafe features. The ShockBlock feature is one of the best features included in the drive. What it effectively does is it protects the drive from any damage caused by improper handling. Surprise!!! Surprise!!! Maxtor says the drive is capable of sustaining up to 30G’s of short-duration shock loads, without damaging the drive. That’s more than what a fighter pilot will ever go through in those mighty F16 super sonic fighters!!! Now that’s a lot of G’s…
The audible noise produced by the drive is very low for a 7200PM drive since the drive incorporates Maxtor’s “silent store TM”. Maxtor also offers a utility for download if you require to disable/enable this feature. However you won’t experience a difference that’s worlds apart. Click here to Download the file (Won’t take more than 20 seconds so go ahead and check it out)
Another utility offered through the Maxtor web site is the WVSET Program. It’s a program for adjusting write verify modes of the drive. (Click here to Download) What this effectively does is it adds additional level of data verification to the already strong Error Correction Control (ECC) procedures implemented on the drive. This feature should only be enabled for applications that are writing extremely critical data to the hard drive since it results in a major performance drop. All our benchmarks were carried out with this feature disabled since the comparison would be unfair otherwise. I have included a few at the end, but it doesn’t compare the results with the rest of the drives. Check out the Maxtor web site for further information on this.
The Maxtor DiamondMax plus drives come in four flavors each designed to cater varying consumer needs. The following chart shows the line up of the drives available:
All Maxtor’s DM Plus 45 drives are backed by their 3-year warranty, which includes their No-Quibble policy as well. What is No-Quibble policy?? Well imagine you bust your drive. Maxtor will send you a replacement drive in advance even before you send them your defective drive in as little as 2 business days from calling their RMA dept. Thereafter you are given 30 days to send them the defective drive, through a convenient and yeah!! Economical method. Maxtor’s No-Quibble policy enables you to be back on your feet soon rather than being bogged down by conventional methods, which no doubt could take weeks.
Well lets go into the tests now…
