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1 2 3 NextMay 12, 2005 by Devon
Cooke and Mike Chin
SPCR has been recommending notebook drives to those who
seek the quietest hard drives for about a year. However, notebook drives are expensive,
lower capacity, and cannot be easily mounted in most cases. For most people,
3.5" drives are still the most feasible compromise between cost, size and
noise level.
We recently unveiled a
comprehensive improved methodology for assessing hard drive noise. Two of the first drives to be
tested with this methodology are Maxtor's DiamondMax 10 and the Deskstar
7K250 from Hitachi Global Storage Technology. These products reflect recent
trends in the hard drive market, including Fluid Dynamic Bearing motors, SATA
interface, and ever-increasing capacity.
DiamondMax 10 is Maxtor's latest and greatest desktop line. It features
a large 16MB cache on higher capacity models and supports some features
of the newer SATA-II standard, including native command queuing (NCQ). Our sample
is the flagship of the line, the triple platter, 300GB model with SATA interface.
|
MAXTOR DIAMONDMAX 10 (quoted from Maxtor's web site)
|
| FEATURE & BRIEF |
COMMENT |
|
Serial ATA/150 and Ultra ATA/133 interfaces
|
NCQ is not available on the PATA model.
|
|
Native command queuing for enhanced efficiency
|
Most useful
for server applications; can reduce desktop performance. |
|
Quiet Drive Technology for acoustics-sensitive applications
|
No other
details given. |
|
Whisper-quiet fluid dynamic bearing motors
|
Now standard
on most drives. |
Maxtor Shock
Protection and Data Protection Systems for greater reliability
|
Again, no
details given. |
|
RoHS compliant version available
|
RoHS is a
European environmental standard. We're not sure why they bother making a
non-RoHS version. |
The Deskstar 7K250 series has been on the market for longer than the DiamondMax and
is no longer Hitachi's top line, which now offers up to half a terabyte of storage capacity. Even though the largest model in the 7K250 series comes
close to the capacity of the DiamondMax 10, its price reflects its position
in Hitachi's lineup. It is sold on noise, power consumption and reliability
instead of state-of-the-art performance, although in our experience, Hitachi (and previously IBM) drives have always been speedy. As with the Maxtor, we are testing the flagship of the
line, which is three platters, 250GB and also uses SATA.
|
HITACHI GLOBAL STORAGE TECHNOLOGY 7K250 (quoted from
Hitachi's web site)
|
| FEATURE & BRIEF |
COMMENT |
|
Award-winning, 7200 RPM performance for better throughput in a
variety of applications, backed by industry-leading benchmark performance
|
The standard we-make-fast-drives feature.
|
|
Serial ATA and parallel ATA interfaces available
|
Performance
(and noise) are close to identical. |
|
Capacities up to 250GB
|
Useful for
large video files or databases. |
|
Low power design reduces system costs and drives high reliability
in ATA-RAID and other multiple drive systems
|
Also allows
the drive to run cooler. |
Quiet operating
modes for easy integration
into noise-sensitive environments |
A fancy way
of saying it supports AAM. |
SPECIFICATIONS
The specifications below are specific to models that we examined. Capacity, cache size, platter number, interface, and even performance vary from
model to model even within a single product line. Acoustics and power dissipation also vary depending on the number of platters
in the drive; smaller capacity drives tend to have fewer platters, and
tend to produce less noise and use less power.
|
Manufacturers' Specifications
|
| HDD Model |
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6B300S0
|
Hitachi 7K250 HDS722525VLSA80
|
| Capacity |
300 GB
|
250 GB
|
| Cache |
16 MB
|
8 MB
|
| Platters |
3
|
3
|
| Rotation Speed |
7,200 RPM
|
7,200 RPM
|
| Interface |
SATA
|
SATA
|
| Latency |
4.17 ms
|
4.17 ms
|
| Average Seek |
<9.0 ms
|
8.5 ms
|
| Start/Stop cycles |
50,000
|
50,000
|
| Operating Temperature |
0 - 60°C
|
5 - 55°C
|
| Acoustics: Idle / AAM seek / normal seek |
2.9 / 3.0 / 3.8 Bel
|
3.0 / 3.1 / 3.4 Bel (Idle)
|
| Help support this site, buy the Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB Hard Drive from one of our affiliate retailers! |
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