Maxtor 160GB SATA Drive - Wrapping it up
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Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 160GB SATA Drive Review
Benchmarking Continued....
PCMark2002:
SCORE |
 |  |
ATA100 | SATA ATA150 |
|
| ATA100 RESULTS |
|
| SATA ATA150 RESULTS |
I'm certain you're wondering where the ATA133 drive results are for PCMark2002. Frankly, so am I. I attempted to run PCMark2002 on the KD7 system (KT400 chipset) around 15 times. I've tried a fresh OS install and different memory, each result was the same, which was a application lockup.
As far as the result go, we see a hard drive score that is damn near double the ATA100 from the Maxtor SATA drive. Impressive? Um, yeah..
Final Thoughts:
This review is ending the opposite of what I had expected from the outset. I know that a reviewer is supposed to begin every review unbiased, but after seeing the yields from earlier SATA drives, my expectations were relatively low. This Maxtor drive has flat out impressed me at every turn.
SATA technology is still relatively new to the mainstream market, and vendor support from motherboards is coming on steadily, but is still in it's infancy for the most part. As SATA continues to be developed from a driver and chipset standpoint, the next generation of SATA is right around the corner offering even more speed from the platform. As a hardware enthusiast it's hard not to get a little excited about what this could mean to us, the consumers. The IDE/ATA platform which has all but run it's course, appears to finally have a new technology capable of not only better performance, but integrating more conveniently to our systems.
While Maxtor may not have brought the first SATA drive to mass market, they seem to have beaten the competition to the punch on delivering a viable option to today's PC enthusiasts. The DiamondMax 9 SATA 160GB hard drive appears to be the real deal with next to no drawbacks. The 8MB cache included on this drive is noticeable and appreciated. Maxtor doesn't appear to have held back much with the release of these drives.
The hot swapability is certainly a welcome feature. While being able to swap your drives "hot" is not something you're average PC user may utilize, the possibilities are nice to say the least. For a server environment the feature is golden, the same holds true for file sharing. I think we've actually found an affordable answer to SCSI, which in all reality, is pretty much as outdated as our standard IDE's of today from a technology standpoint.
Conclusion:
Our conclusive opinion on this drive is relatively simple. Maxtor has apparently come to the table prepared by delivering a solid, fast, reliable SATA drive to the mass market. The DiamondMax 9 SATA drive never once failed to impress us, and took our expectations for current generation SATA drives to the next level.
Do I recommend you rush out and drop your hard earned greenbacks on it? That pretty much depends on your current situation. If you have a motherboard that supports it and are not currently running a RAID array, this is a no-brainer, buy it. If your motherboard DOESN'T support SATA yet you are looking to add size to your storage I would STILL recommend you buy it. Now if you are currently running RAID, or have more than enough storage already then the decision has to come down to you and what you're looking for.
About the only thing I can tell you for certain is that if you're in the market for a SATA drive, or perhaps wondering if the technology is here to stay, this new drive from Maxtor will not disappoint you. Add the performance to Maxtor's stellar customer support history and you've got a pretty solid option wide open to you.
PROS:
CONS:
If you're thinking that this is an excessively short "cons" list, you're right. I was actually doing an all out rack of my memory to throw together some negative things about this drive. Then I realized that if Maxtor released a product that requires abnormal effort to find something wrong with it, then maybe it actually DESERVES a short Cons list.
For that reason I've decided to award the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 8MB Cache 160GB SATA drive with the OCAddiction.com "Editor's Choice" award. This drive simply failed to let us down and was a pleasure to work with and use.
That about wraps it up I believe. If you're interested in getting a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 SATA drive I suggest you search for prices here as you'll be hard pressed to find it cheaper anywhere else. Thanks a lot for checking out our review, feel free to head to our forums to discuss this article, or back to the OCAddiction.com front page to check out the other GooSH!™
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