It's the highest capacity hard disk drive so far, regardless of physical size or interface: That's all you need to know about Maxtor's new DiamondMax 80. If you want a digital warehouse for your AV files or Web downloads, this newest DiamondMax will hold more than any other drive -- 81.9 GB -- and do it cheaper. Its AU$900 list price equates to about AU$10.98 per gigabyte.
To get that capacity, Maxtor takes a straightforward approach. It adds one more platter to its former capacity leader, the DiamondMax 60, bringing its total to four platters with eight heads to service them.
Otherwise the list of features for the 80 echoes exactly those of the earlier product. It has the same areal density, about matching the big capacity drives from other makers at 14.7 gigabits per square inch and besting all with 20.5GB per platter. It also spins at the same rate as its predecessor, 5400 RPM.
The DiamondMax 80 delivers similar performance as its 60GB forebear. Although the low spin rate keeps it out of high-performance ranks, the areal density compensates to give throughput similar to a 7200 RPM drive. It suffers, however, when you need fast access because of the higher latency imposed by the slow spin. It performed roughly the same with ATA/33 and ATA/66 interfaces, but jumping to an ATA/100 interface helped it score about 10 percent higher on Business Disk WinMark 99. Not so for High-End Disk Winmark, where ATA/100 didn't open any bottlenecks.
Nothing about the DiamondMax 80 belies its special capacity status. It looks like any other Maxtor disk, using the same packaging, accessories (it comes with an ATA/66-100 cable), and MaxBlast setup software. As with any disk with more than eight gigabtyes, you'll need to update the BIOS of your older PC to take full advantage of it. Standard Windows 95/98 partitioning software (FDISK) will give erroneous capacity displays because of its own 64GB limit (no shame on Maxtor here). Setup is a matter only of plugging it in and running MaxBlast, perhaps using its partition-cloning option if you want to replace your old drive with the DiamondMax.
With its one-year no-questions warranty, the only mystery the DiamondMax 80 leaves open is when Maxtor will drop the other shoe and slide a fifth platter into the drive housing to break the triple-digit mark.
Maxtor DiamondMax 80
Company: Tech Pacific
Ph: 1300 650 159; Fax: 1300 650 393
Price: AU$900.
Rating: 4 Star
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