Maxtor DiamondMax 10

"The performance of the Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB drive was impressive in both the benchmarks and real world testing. It managed to put up the best numbers of all the drives on hand in pretty much every test conducted. Even though one reference drive was capable of SATA-300 speeds, all tests were conducted on a SATA-150 interface for the sake of parity. Comparing apples to apples, the SATA-150 performance of the Maxtor drive was the best. The combination of a SATA-150 interface and NCQ support makes this drive a strong performer for today, as well as into the foreseeable future. SATA-300 is now available, and offers double the theoretical transfer rate, but the applications are still rather uncommon."

"I think that this drive stood up incredibly well and proved that Seagate’s push to be first to the market doesn’t always mean it is has best product available. The DiamondMax 10 definitely takes several large steps over its predecessor, the DiamondMax 9 and leaves some seriously large footprints. The use of Native Command Queuing in this drive aids its success in random seeking and data duplication."

"Maxtor’s introduction of a 16MB cache buffer on their new DiamondMax 10 line of drives will no doubt kick start the rest of the hard drive industry to follow, especially since the performance of these drives appears to be pretty fantastic considering it’s still based 7,200 RPM spindle speed technology. The DiamondMax 10 brings along some important changes to this line of hard drives which catapults Maxtor to the top of the technology ladder."

"When configured in RAID 0, the Maxtor drives have faster performance and almost 5 times the capacity of a pair of Raptors. When you factor in the nearly $50 lower price tag on the Maxtor drives, the choice for both performance and capacity is clear. Overall, we were impressed by the value of Maxtor's DiamondMax 10 drives and would recommend them to anyone looking for a high-performing, high-capacity hard drive. And if you've got the funds, and a controller capable of RAID, performance can be increased dramatically by running two or more of these drives in a striped array."

"Overall the drive is worth the $100 price tag, especially since the drive has bonus 16MB cache. The drive would make a wonderful addition to any system needing extra storage space, or as a primary drive."