Legit Reviews

I just finished installing and setting it up, and all i can say is this thing rocks. best HDD I have ever had, and that includes the way overrated WD Raptors.
16MB cach, SATA, 300GB of space. I'll never need another HDD. except maybe to get another one and put them in RAID 0

I told you that I liked my 250GB Maxtors!! ;)

Glad to hear that you liked them!

I also believe that is one of the first SATA II drives.

wow thats a big as hell hd, and 16mb cach, as for sata2 i dont think so i think its the first hd to use Native Command Queuing.

What i have read is it is the first to offer 16 mb cache, the first to offer command queuing (sp), and the first SATAII available for consumers.

where can the Maxtor Diamond Max 10 be found? I looked at newegg and several others and no one had it. Also I would like to know how the Max10 stacks up against a SATA Raid setup that uses say two 80 Gig Max9 HDDs. I mean solely in terms of speed. I know RAIDs can be hard to manage but I am sure the Max10 300GB is rather pricey.

The single drive would most likly cost less than a RAID solution and provide higher preformance in all but raw transfer speed. i dont know for sure as i have not tested but thats speeking from experience with lots of HD's.

Newegg.com - MAXTOR 6B300S0 Hard Drives
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe ... 359&depa=1

The Maxtor 80GB SATA OEM sells for 71.99 on NewEgg VS. the 300GB SATAII at 242.00. My MOBO has a RAID controller built in so the RAID would cost me 144.00 to set up VS. 242.00 for the single drive. I have a new (6 mo. old) 120GB ATA133 I can use for storage so I don't really need a 300GB. I don't know anything about RAIDS other than the principal behind them so correct me if I am wrong. With twin 80GB HDDs in a RAID I would basically have a boot drive of 160GB with a backup of 120GB with my current drive. I can't imagine needing more storage than that. I know RAIDS can be a headache but if I use my backup drive regularly can't I fix any problems relatively easily?

All very true. If you have 160GB in a RAID 0 and 120GB for storage, then you would be fine.
If you were just looking for a fast/large HDD I would recommend the maxtor, but since you already have the set up that you do, you really don't need it.
I was usinf twin hitachi's in a RAID 0 and they worked very well, so i think you will be happy and have a well thought out idea with the storage/backup HDD

That set up will net you better preformance in some applications. it will still not be as fast as a single high density large drive or a single raptor but it will give you some apreciable bump.

Hey Valence, you seem to be the resident expert on HDDs. Not that I am discounting your input Capper but it seems Valence deals with more HDDs than the rest of us. Can you educate me on the basics? I mean I had understood that RIAD 0 was, by diffinition of what it does, always faster than a single drive. When you say high density larger drives which drives fit that category? also if you have twin drives with 8MB buffer each does that equate to the same as a 16MB buffer on a single drive? and my last question, when you say faster on some applications which applications do you mean and is the speed difference only noticeable when benching or would I see a real world difference. I know you don't have numerical data or test to demonstrate but you do seem to know your HDDs so any recommendations would be appreciated. I am at least three months away from doing any real changes but you know how it goes once the itch is there you gotta scratch sooner or later and I itch bad.

All I need is the 300gb Maxtor, then I'm going to partition it so I have 100 gigs for my C: drive and 200 for my D: drive.

Merlin wrote:I mean I had understood that RIAD 0 was, by definition of what it does, always faster than a single drive. When you say high density larger drives which drives fit that category? also if you have twin drives with 8MB buffer each does that equate to the same as a 16MB buffer on a single drive? and my last question, when you say faster on some applications which applications do you mean and is the speed difference only noticeable when benching or would I see a real world difference.

Thanks for the vote of confidence but i would not call my self an expert. I have done a lot of reading and i do work with a lot of different types of storage, mostly SCSI RAID, some IDE RAID, and various standalone drives. now to tackle your questions.

RAID 0 is faster some times. The reason for this is that the HD is the slowest point in your system. Knowing that a cpu is useless without data computer designers long ago designed storage systems to compensate for that fact. In a typical computer you have on board cache in the chip that provides data to the cpu to keep the pipelines full. You then have data in the RAM that can be loaded to the cache or to the HD as needed. Here is the kicker though. the cache on the HD its self.

This is the buffer that keeps your computer from slowing to a crawl while it has to access data. There are a few things that go into good HD design the first and foremost is the caching algorithms, these algorithms try to predict what data you will be using before you make a request for it. That way it is in the 2,8,16mb cache and ready to be used by the system, no wait involved.

The second part is the cache size because it determines how much can be prefetched and keeps the drive operating at high efficiency.

The third and final performance factor is the seek time, this is a combination of the rotational speed of the drive, the speed of the actuator in the read/write head, and the aerial density of drive surface.

The aerial density is what i mean when i say high density drives. This refers to the physical distance between magnetic bits. Generally newer drives have a higher density, ie 80Gb per platter or 100Gb per platter. When the density is higher the head has less distance to travel to seek data, and can read more data sequentially in one full rotation of the platter. The general idea is that an 80Gb drive from 3 years ago made with two 40Gb platters will have a lower performance than an 80Gb drive that is only 1 year old just because of the density. So far Seagate and Maxtor are the only companies offering 100Gb platter designs.

Now lets talk about "faster." There are some things that RAID 0 can do faster, ie more data, than a single drive. Two drives in a RAID 0 almost doubles the throughput of the drive, this means that when moving LOTS of data, a RAID system can utilize more of the bandwidth. Because the seek time to read the data is only marginally reduced, it is the seek time that effects the responsiveness of the drive not the throughput when not accessing large files (video, audio, database).

Here in lies the catch unless your moving/reading/writing large files the peak transfer speed of the drive NEVER matters. As long as you are doing normal desktop applications, such as gaming, word processing, web... all your relevant and necessary data is in the drive cache. Most programs that user needs are written sequentially on to the drive when installed, defragmenting also realigns this data. This means that it is very easy for the caching algorithm to predict what you will need next because its the next bit of data on the drive.

So what applications benefit from RAID 0? Simply any application that cannot be predicted, like a database or multi user application. The HD can predict the usage of a single user but when 5, 10 or a 1000 users are requesting data that is in different locations on the HD it cannot. That is when the density, rotational speed, and throughput matter. The other applications that might require RAID are high end video applications. Unless your using a HD broadcast quality DV camera you cannot use all the throughput on a current HD. Broadcast quality video requires around 16Mb per second and a good HD will more far more like the Hitachi Deskstar which moves 60Mb at the beginning of the drive and 32Mb at the end.

This means that the only time you will see any benefit from the RIAD is in synthetic benchmarking. There will be no real world benefit other than spanning two 80Gb drives into one 160Gb drive. All at the expense of data security, higher chance of failure, and environmental concerns like electricity (although its small).

Bottom line if Maxtor comes out with a DimmondMax 10 in the $150 range, what you would be paying for your two sata 80Gb drives, then the DM10 will net you more performance. It will do so because of the larger cache, higher density, and recently optimized caching algorithms.

Thank you very much and just in case you were wondering, if you get paid to use your knowledge on a subject you are an expert and by your answer I would say your a well qualified expert.

I just hope that this is helpful in understanding the issue. The only things i did not factor into your question is the WOW factor. when you tell people that you have a RAID 0 some people go wow. that is a real world benifit but it will not make your computer go faster.

A 300GB SATAII with a 16MB buffer has some pretty awsome WOW power with a lot less headaches for the owner of the WOW so I think I'll stay away from RAID and see what pricing does over the next few weeks/ months. With my luck I'll wait just long enough to get one right before the price drops dramatically.

i just got around to reading this and it's great info. however, your essay was only 804 words, not 850. but that's ok. reliability has always been a main concern of using raid.

i think we can all agree that the best thing to do would be to run a raid 0 configuration with the DM10 drive and have 600gb with 32mb cache.

it's only a matter of time before consumers are going to have 1 terrabyte of HD space. sweet.

Someone already built a 2 terrabyte PC with all Hitachi 400GB HDDs