New Thin Maxtor Drives, WOW

[CraxySerge]

Yesterday I went to the local computer shop to pick up a 40GIG drive for a friend of mine, and I got him the new Maxtor drive. Its almost 2 times as this as all the other hard drives out there. Anybody else seee those drives?

 

[ssgohan434]

is there any advantage to the small drives?

 

[Johnny Knoxville]

is there any advantage to the small drives?

less heat?

 

[SkaGoatMaster]

The Small drive is becuz they switched to using 40 GB Platters instead of 20 GB Platters, that means, the old 40 Gigers had 2 platters, made them thicking, now the 40 gig is only a single platter.

 

[wildfrogman]

Hmm i have heard about them going to be out soon, and hearing reports of them for sale is a good sign. I figure it would be awesome for sombody to be able to really pack in tons of harddrives in a normal size case or such.

 

[Mike K]

Well I'm not sure if I have the same kind you are talking about, but I have a Maxtor 15GB hard drive that I've had for about 1 1/2 years and it is not even 3/4" tall. So if it is the same you are talking about they are not new at all.

 

[cursor]

Can someone post a picture?

 

[PYROMANIAC]

yea i got a 40gig for my moms new comp and its really really small...i'd say .5" thick if not smaller give or take a few decimals...really thin..when the HD came in i thought it was a PCI card from the look of the static bag b/c it was so small

 

[Mike K]

heres mine

 

[cursor]

pretty low profile. nifty. guess this saves Maxtor like .25 per drive in extra aluminum for the drive casing?

 

[asecmt]

HE HE HE GOOD ONE!!

 

[Mike K]

I just measured it and it's only 5/8" tall. I measured a regular drive and it is just under 1" tall.

 

[PYROMANIAC]

pretty low profile. nifty. guess this saves Maxtor like .25 per drive in extra aluminum for the drive casing?

probly..and the slim design looks cool too imo

 

[Kirky]

It's DiamondMax Plus 8

It is DiamondMax Plus 8. It has one of the highest areal density among currrent IDE harddisks, with 40 Gb per SIDE (and per head) of a platter. It only uses one side of the platter, so it has only one head. Another new line of IDE harddisk from Maxtor, DiamondMax Plus 9, also has 40 Gb per side but has one head on each side of the platter giving 80 Gb per platter.

This DiamondMax Plus 8 surprises many people because of its AMAZING transfer rate! It is now easily the champ in transfer rate, beating its sibbling DiamondMax Plus 9, beating even WesternD's JB series by a wide margin! How fast? Fastest 63 Mb/sec for inner track, and 51 Mb/sec average!

http://forums.storagereview.net/viewtopic.php?t=6155

http://forums.storagereview.net/viewtopic.php?t=5956

http://forums.storagereview.net/viewtopic.php?t=5614

It's access time is, however, nothing to shout about, being simliar to Dmax+9, and a tad below the older D740.

Formal benchmark aside, what about real life experience? I have all the above three types of Maxtor harddisk, D740, Dmax+8, and Dmax+9. My main computing tasks are video and graphics which involve large files read/write, and true to its blazing fast transfer rate, Dmax+8 is noticably faster to work with.

 

[ssgohan434]

so is the harddrive faster than the 8MB cache special edition western digital harddrives?

 

[Mr. Chambers]

so is the harddrive faster than the 8MB cache special edition western digital harddrives?

doubtful. the 8mb will beat ANY 2mb at the moment.. but this is by far the fastest 2mb drive.. i've got one of these new guys and it just screams... much faster than my seagate 40gig...

 

[Kirky]

Faster than WD JB in transfer rate

This Dmax+8 has average 51 Mb/sec transfer rate (TR), while WD 80 Gb JB series (with 8 Mb cache) 41 Mb/sec. Even the latest 200 Gb (66 Gb/platter) BB/JB from WD is no match in TR:

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200210/20021018WD2000xB_2.html (Note that BB with 2 Mb cache and JB series with 8 Mb cache are almost identical in TR).

However, apart from TR, access time, cache and firmware features (e.g. 'tag-n-queue') are also important in determining performance. TR is not the all in all, but neither is access time or cache size. 8 Mb can be helpful but not in all situations. In fact many people think that 8 Mb cache has been hyped up for what its worth. The relative contribution to performance by TR, access time and cache to a large extent depends on your OWN hard disk usage.

Dmax+8 is the FASTEST IDE hard disk in term of TRANSFER RATE now. So in the hard disk usage where large file read/write are involved in video/graphics, Dmax+8 is also the fastest hard disk FOR THIS COMPUTING NEED.

I will concede though, for the usual/typical desktop and server environment where many mixed small to medium files are frequently accessed, WD 8 Mb with larger cache and better access time is likely to perform better than Dmax+8. But the jury is still out because I have yet to see a formal APPLICATION benchmark comparison of Dmax+8 with WD JB or other hard disks.

 

[ssgohan434]

so there both better at their own thing?

 

[Mr. $T$]

Do you work for Maxtor, Kirky?
lol

Slick. I have had a 20giger' that is that small pretty neat little thing.

 

[ssgohan434]

with these smaller drives does it mean that u can fit 2 harddrives in a bay made for only 1? and wouldnt that make twice as much if not more heat in one bay which is bad for harddrives?