Ready for CeBIT: Fujitsu, Maxtor and Quantum’s latest High-Performance IDE Drives – THG.RU

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Ready for CeBIT: Three new High-Performance IDE Drives

The first news is a small disappointment, as we could only gather three new drives right now. The latest model from Western Digital features 30 GB per platter, but being a 5,400 rpm drive it would not have been a proper candidate for this high-performance review. Seagate’s Barracuda ATA III seems to be quite a nice performer; unfortunately we did not get one in time. I am not quite sure what’s the problem with IBM, as particularly the European hard drive division seems to be too disorganized to send out samples. Obviously they prefer to take some rest on their laurels right now. Anyway I do not want to waste your time with such things although some of you might be interested in that.

The cooperation with Fujitsu is working very well. Only some days after our inquiry we received their MPG3204AH-E, the latest high-performance IDE model. This one is available in sizes of 20, 30 and 40 GB. Maxtor is participating in a Tom’s Hardware review for the second time. Some moths ago they sent us their 80 GB DiamondMax drive, which is still the largest IDE hard drive available. Quantum is taking part in our reviews as well. We received the Fireball Plus AS at a capacity of 60 GB. There are also several smaller drives available also.

All three drives work at 7,200 rpm, all come with 2 MB buffer memory, and all of them are storing 20 GB per platter, allowing the manufacturer to produce various derivates at different capacities.

Reliability Features

Succeeding in the storage market with IDE drives is not particularly easy. The profit margins are small, as customers want fast and reliable drives, while everybody has to save costs. Manufacturers are doing some tough splits, as they have to keep improving their drives in terms of performance and capacity without sacrificing reliability. A broken motherboard, memory or graphics card can be exchanged, but your data usually dies with the hard drive!

The PCB of a hard drive has to be as small as possible in order to keep production costs low.

Three numbers are important for everybody who keeps using the drive intensely. The MTBF (Mean time between failure) has been the most important statement for a long time. This life time specification is of course quite theoretical and not applicable for most home users, as most of us do not keep the computer running 24 hours a day. If you want to get a server hard drive, I would have a quick look at this number.

All other users should primarily focus on the number of start-stop cycles, which is more important for home or office computers. As you can see on the following table, you cannot always get all the information you want. Unfortunately most manufacturers do not publish all the data we would like to see, even though the specs are always inflated with lots of numbers.

Another information is the component lifetime. In my opinion, this number is the only straightforward information you can get. 500,000 hours between failure are ~57 years of permanent operation – quite a lot for a mechanical device, don’t you think? 5 years component lifetime sounds very realistic, as most of you might have experienced hard drive head-crashes or other problems within that time already. The number of start-stop cycles is not by far as useful, as you would have to start your computer almost 30 times a day to exceed the component lifetime.

UltraATA/100: A Trendy Interface

In the last months more and more motherboards with integrated IDE RAID controller have become available. Even though SCSI might still be the one and only choice for professionals, IDE has become a powerful interface today. Using two or more drives in a RAID 0 configuration will boost your hard drive performance considerably. You only have to buy the additional hard drives of course.

The second reason that speaks for IDE RAID is data safety. Most controller chips are capable of running two or four hard drives in RAID mode 1 (the so-called ‘mirroring’). You will only get marginally better drive performance while sacrificing half the capacity, but your data will be disproportionately safer, since the controller will simultaneously write every byte twice.

Usually you can also combine those two modes by using four drives: Data will be split on two hard drives and mirrored onto the other two drives at the same time. This way you will get a fast and very safe IDE subsystem.

Using UltraATA/100 drives with a slower interface

Lots of readers keep asking us what might happen if they attach a modern ATA/100 drive to an older controller (UltraDMA/33 or UltraATA/66). Basically the drives are compatible with all former IDE transfer modes, including the old PIO modes 0-4. A ATA/66 controller is fast enough for ATA/100 drives. Even if you want to use one of the three drives with an ATA/33 interface, you can still do it without losing major amounts of performance. Of course the data transfer rate will be reduced by the slower interface, but at the same time you can be sure that the interface is fully used. Just make sure you have an adequate amount of RAM in order to reduce unnecessary interface activity by Windows using the swap file. People who are still using older Pentium boards with a PIO hard drive should consider a new basic system before upgrading to high-end hard drives.

Fujitsu MPG3204AH-E

Fujitsu sent us their 20 GB model, the MPG3204AH-E. The two-platter versions at 30 and 40 GB capacity comes with Fujitsu’s FDB (Fluid Dynamic Bearing) – but not the 20 GB model. A sticker on the top of the drive explains all possible jumper setups, making the drive setup quite an easy affair. There is also a web page address printed on the top, just in case you should require technical access.

The drive was able to show impressively short access times and the best data transfer speeds of all IDE hard drives ever. Particularly the transfer performance at the end of the medium was 10% higher than the second fastest model, Maxtor’s DiamondMax Plus 60. The Business Disk WinMark finished with a good result as well, while the drive was not able to surpass the competition in the High-End Disk WinMark.

The MPG3204AH-E is also one of the least noisy IDE drives available. That could be achieved thanks to the fluid bearing system. In terms of operating temperature this drive also belongs to the very top, as it did not get hot at all during our tests.

Please click here for the detailed specifications.

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 60

We received the Diamond Max Plus 60 (5T040H4) in a nice retail box including mounting rails, screws, a 80-pin IDE cable, 7 language installation instructions and the Max Blast utility, which allows you to run the drive even with the oldest controllers (even those without LBA support).

Maxtor offers this model in capacities of 60, 40, 30, 20 and 10 GB. Usually the large hard drives make more noise and become hotter than the smaller versions. We expect the 10 and 20 GB versions to be even more silent and less hot, even though the 40 GB model does actually not get very hot, if you consider the rotation speed of 7,200 rpm.

In terms of data transfer speed the Maxtor drive is able to outperform almost the whole competition including IBM’s DeskStar 75 GXP. Just the new Fujitsu drive is slightly faster. The 5T040H4 scored the second fastest result in ZD’s Business WinMark benchmark of the WinBench 99, followed closely by the Fujitsu MPG3204AH-E.

Please click here for the detailed specifications.

Quantum Fireball Plus AS

Once again Quantum sent us one of their drives for evaluation. First of all I’d like to give my kudos to Quantum for the quick access time. Even though the average seek time provided by the manufacturers is always below 10 ms, hardly any drive is able to break the barrier of 10 ms for a complete average access. At 10.3 ms, in terms of access time the Fireball Plus AS is the fastest IDE drive that ever arrived at our lab. This drive also the finished first in the Business Disk WinMark, making it perfectly suitable for Windows standard applications. This lucky series continues with the High-End Disk WinMark: Again Quantum scores most points. The pure data transfer numbers are almost as good as IBM’s half year old DeskStar 75 GXP, but not able to beat the two other competitors in this test.

Please click here for the detailed specifications.

Test Setup

Data Transfer Diagrams – Fujitsu MPG3204AH-E

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 60

Quantum Fireball Plus AS

Access Time

There is quite a huge difference between the three new hard drives and the two others. Particularly the Quantum drive is very quick. Still Fujitsu and Maxtor are close behind, outperforming our reference drive, the IBM DTLA.

Data Transfer Performance

Both the Fujitsu and the Maxtor drive are able to beat the IBM DeskStar. The Fireball Plus AS from Quantum is pretty close behind it. If you want to use the drive for video applications or other streaming stuff, you should pay high attention to constant transfer rates. The Fujitsu loses less transfer speed than the others when reaching the end of the medium.

Business Disk WinMark

Ziff Davis’ WinBench 99 includes three benchmarks, which are valuable for hard drive tests: The Disc Inspection Test, as well as the Business and High-End WinBench. The Business WinBench for hard drives is something like the SYSmark for complete systems: It will give you a good impression about the drive’s performance under real life conditions. However, you should never base a buying decision on just one single benchmark. This one uses the same applications that run in WinStone 99.

High-End Disk WinMark

The high-end version of the Disk WinBench runs simulations based on professional applications. This time Quantum is able to beat the rest with their new Fireball Plus AS.

Noise Measurements

The noise measurements revealed a delightful result: All three drives make clearly less noise than last generation drives. You won’t even hear the Fujitsu drive any more, making the choice of a 5,400 rpm drives for noise reasons almost obsolete now.

Temperature Measurements

Not only the operating noise but also the drive temperature could be reduced significantly with the latest generation hard drives. That’s particularly important as fast processors and graphics cards are getting hotter and hotter; so at least your hard drive won’t contribute too much to system heat.

Conclusion

This review comes to a good end, as all three drives perform pretty well. Fujitsu was able to surprise us with excellent transfer rates, quick access time, low noise level and ‘cool’ operation. Quantum is offering the drive with the lowest access time right now, making it the perfect choice for database applications and other software with a large number of random accesses.

The most balanced drive comes from Maxtor. Good performance (second best access time and data transfer) in combination with attractive prices has always been a strength of this company.

Most people won’t be able to differentiate between those three hard drives in real life. The more you are aware of what kind of applications you are going to run, the more important becomes the choice of the right hard drive.

People who want a quiet drive that does not produce a lot of heat should take the Fujitsu MPG3204AH-E with liquid bearing. Systems for database applications will run best with the Quantum drive.

If you are interested in a different size than the drives we tested, you can of course choose other models within the same series, usually between 10 and 60 GB. The bigger the capacity, the more platters will be used, leading to slightly more heat due to higher friction.