Maxtor 160GB SATA Drive
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In the personal computer industry the general rule of thumb is that if you don't like the way something in particular is done, wait 15 minutes, it will change. While generally that holds true across the board, there are a few things that simply do not change. Once such thing is the way our hard drive communicates with our motherboard and system as a whole. Since 1989 IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) has pretty much ruled the roost in hard drive communications. In 1998 IDE was given a minor face lift with the invent of ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment), which in laymen's terms basically just fattened the pipeline of information transfer from the stoic 33MB/s to upwards of 100 to 133MB/s depending on the manufacturer. Thru all of that the only real difference to the end user was a cable change which took the standard IDE cable (which is the name it still goes by today) from 40 conductor to 80 conductors. Even then it didn't increase the actual data channels, but simply added a ground wire between the original 40 wires to insure data integrity and lower interference of the higher speeds. Basically eliminating "cross-talk".
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 160GB SATA Drive Review
Introduction:
In the personal computer industry the general rule of thumb is that if you don't like the way something in particular is done, wait 15 minutes, it will change. While generally that holds true across the board, there are a few things that simply do not change. Once such thing is the way our hard drive communicates with our motherboard and system as a whole. Since 1989 IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) has pretty much ruled the roost in hard drive communications. In 1998 IDE was given a minor face lift with the invent of ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment), which in laymen's terms basically just fattened the pipeline of information transfer from the stoic 33MB/s to upwards of 100 to 133MB/s depending on the manufacturer. Thru all of that the only real difference to the end user was a cable change which took the standard IDE cable (which is the name it still goes by today) from 40 conductor to 80 conductors. Even then it didn't increase the actual data channels, but simply added a ground wire between the original 40 wires to insure data integrity and lower interference of the higher speeds. Basically eliminating "cross-talk".
Well all of this is about to change. After close to 15 years of using the same medium for data transfer from drive to system there is a new standard brewing that is catching on quickly. Enter Serial ATA. Serial ATA not only changes the appearance of what we've grown accustom to, it adds something we haven't seen in a while, scalability.
Serial ATA, what is it about?
Serial ATA is intended to be an answer to the "what is the next mainstream storage interface" question. It is intended to replace IDE ports that are now seen on virtually every motherboard released. Below you'll see the Serial ATA (hereafter referred to as "SATA") compared to the other popular mediums.
You'll notice several things that it offers that is better than the standard IDE interface used today.
MUCH faster data transfer at 150 MBPS for this 1st generation.
Double the acceptable cable length, checking in at a full meter.
The drive is "hot swappable", meaning no more reboots!
The advantages over the other mediums working their way onto the scene are also not necessarily small things.
It is considerably faster (150MBPS compared to the 60MBPS of USB 2.0)
It is bootable. Meaning it can truly take the place of your IDE devices.
Price per GB is still substantially lower than the other devices.
It interfaces your system in much the way that your current IDE devices do, at least on the surface.
Just as ATA100 controllers have been integrated into motherboards in the past few years, SATA is already working it's way into some of the better, not necessarily more expensive, boards on the market today. You'll see the much smaller path to the adapter, but you'll also notice that only one device per port is available. This is worth mentioning but I don't feel to be excessively important. For starters the port is not being asked to share resources with your CDRoms right now, meaning there is not the need for more interfaces for that. The cost of storage has dropped to the point where excessively large drives can be purchased for less than what one 1/10th of the size could have been purchased for just 2 years ago. For you RAID fans there are no concerns either, as you would never want to run multiple devices on the same channel anyway, as that effectively depletes the RAID advantage.
Alright, now that I've bored ya with the "what is it", let's take a look at the specific drive we're reviewing..
Initial Impressions of the Drive:
When I opened the box I couldn't believe my eyes, it was the most.... Alright, that's BS, it was a hard drive. Yup, it looked on first glance like every other Maxtor hard drive I've come into contact with. It's the standard 3.5" design, same thickness, same labels, same everything.
Well, ALMOST same everything. One thing that was drastically different was of course the data cable connection. On the SATA drive there was a nice neat port to plug in the SATA cable and power cords..
What do ya say we head to page two, look in-depth at the specs of this drive from Maxtor, the benchmark it till we're blue? Yeah, I like that idea too...
Next: Specs >>
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