Maxtor's ATA-133 Does 160GB

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Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday September 11, 2001 @08:22PM from the 160-scoops-of-yum dept.

B. Galliart writes "ExtremeTech has an article about Maxtor's two new bleeding edge ATA-133 drive models coming out later this month. The most interesting of these is the 160 Gigabyte DiamondMax Plus D540X (priced around $400) which uses Maxtor's purposed "BigDrive" 48-bit address space instead of the common E/IDE 28-bit address space thus getting pass the 137GB barrier. The drive should be useable on existing computers due to a bundled Promise Technologies ATA-133 PCI card."

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It's the rotation speed that counts by Drashcan · 2001-09-11 20:27 · Score: 5, Informative

For most of the applications the rotation speed is more important than the ATA standard. This determines the access time.
I prefer an ATA-66 @ 7200 rpm above an ATA-100 @ 5400

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The nice thing about Windows is: it does not just crash; it displays a nice little dialog box and let's you press 'OK'
1. Re:It's the rotation speed that counts by raynet · 2001-09-11 21:22 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  High rotation speed might also be bad. I've noticed that none of my 5400 rpm hdd have crashed (IBM Deskstars and Maxtors) but my 3 IBM Deskstars running at 7200 rpms have all crashed, mostly on spin-up problems.
  
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  - Raynet --> .
2. Re:It's the rotation speed that counts by Jeff+Probst · 2001-09-11 21:39 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  it is not the rotation speed that counts. rotation speed accounts for access time, but nothing more.
  cluster density is another kettle of fish, if a drive can pack twice the amount of information in half the space, you should get twice the sustained transfer rate, all things being equal.
  speed is access time.
3. Re:It's the rotation speed that counts by Jeff+Probst · 2001-09-11 21:55 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  a good overview of rotation speed vs data density is available from tom's hardware:
  There are basically two ways to increase the performance of hard drives: increase the rotation speed or increase the data density. Increasing the rotation speed definitely enables better sequential performance, but only if you adjust the read/write mechanism accordingly.
  I dont want to take away all of tom's message, so read it further for a reasonable overview of the issues involved.
4. Re:It's the rotation speed that counts by ostiguy · 2001-09-11 23:36 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  7200 rpm is not high rotation speed - 10k rpm scsi drives are in there 3rd generation, and a few 15k rpm drives have been out for a few months now. The IBM 60gxp series is simply dead in the water, read the forums at www.storagereview.com for more info.
  
  ostiguy
5. Re:It's the rotation speed that counts by Zaknafein500 · 2001-09-12 01:31 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  I for one will never buy another high-rpm drive until they have proven them reliable.
  
  I've never had issues with a 7200 RPM drive, but there are some applications where they definitely don't work well. If you don't have good heat dissapation in your case, don't get a 7200 RPM drive. They produce much more heat than a 5400 RPM drive. 7200 RPM drives are known to not work well in a TiVo. The heat they put out tends to cause severe stutter problems, among other things.
  
  --
  
  "The guide is definitive, reality is frequently inaccurate."
Cool !!! by Betcour · 2001-09-11 20:36 · Score: 3, Informative

With 8 of those drives (which would fit into a regular PC with RAID controler) you could finally reach a Terabyte. Gee, now no point in compressing those CDs into MP3, might as well keep them in clean WAVE files :)
Extended LBA already part of ATA-6 spec by arafel · 2001-09-11 21:57 · Score: 3, Informative

"Extended" LBA commands are part of the ATA-6 standard (or proposed standard, or whatever it's marked as today). They give 48-bit address spaces. I suspect Maxtor is using this; if not, hopefully it will be soon.

Hope that's helpful.
Re:Great turnaround by chill · 2001-09-11 23:04 · Score: 4, Informative

ATAPI still has a limit of 2 devices (master/slave) per controller. Ultra-SCSI is 15, not including LUNs.

ATAPI devices are still limited to hard drives and CD-ROMs (via a hack). SCSI handles scanners, tape drives and other devices as well -- it is much more generic.

ATAPI still causes performance degredation when you are accessing the master and slave on the same channel at the same time. SCSI does not.

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Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Re:Great turnaround by GigsVT · 2001-09-12 00:31 · Score: 2, Informative

The 3ware ATA RAID controller cards do not put drives into master/slave config, they only support one drive per IDE channel.

Available in up to 8 ports per card, 3 cards per computer.

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I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Re:CPRM and SSSCA by RelliK · 2001-09-12 01:08 · Score: 4, Informative

How quickly do we forget that CPRM proposal was defeated and Maxtor was one of the high-profile companies to vote against it. IBM, Microsoft, Iomega and others wanted to push it through.

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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
"Maxtor Big Drive" = ATA/ATAPI-6 by Otto · 2001-09-12 03:26 · Score: 4, Informative

Maxtor's so called Big Drive technology is no more than an implementation of the spec. ATA/ATAPI-6 specifies a 48 bit address scheme, giving a new upper limit of 2^48*512 bytes, or 128 petabytes.

Also, the limitation is not 137 GB, it's 128 GB. And Maxtor's new drives are not 160 GB, they're slightly more than 149 GB. These mistakes are what happen when you start believing "drive manufacturer math".

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- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
1. Re:"Maxtor Big Drive" = ATA/ATAPI-6 by jbrauer · 2001-09-12 05:42 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  It is both 128GB and 137GBs. Depends on if you believe a drive vendor and a GB is 10^9 bytes (137.439...GB), or you believe it is 128*1024^3, (128GB).
  
  Still smaller than SCSI drives ;)
Re:How do I... by haruharaharu · 2001-09-12 04:40 · Score: 3, Informative

how do I mitigate, at reasonable cost, the risk associated with a hard disk failure?

Buy 2 and run them in raid-1. If you're paranoid, buy 3 at the same time so you have a spare

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Reboot macht Frei.
Re:SCSI prices and sizes by Izmunuti · 2001-09-12 06:59 · Score: 2, Informative

That's the thing, the mechanisms aren't the same. They often spin faster (10K, 15K), seek faster, are more reliable (>10^6 MTBF), have bigger buffers, and so on. IDE mechanisms are cheap. There's a little overlap at IDE's high end and SCSI's low end where they may share a mechanism. If there were a Cheetah-15K/IDE it would cost about the same as a Cheetah-15K/SCSI.
Re:Maxtor's JUNK! by thanq · 2001-09-12 08:24 · Score: 2, Informative

Maybe it's your board, connector, BIOS, or other piece of hardware. It is highly unlikely that the hard drive itself would be bad after you exchange it. But in case it is, ask them for another one. If that one will arrive not working, then I bet you that it's something on your side.
Beside that, a really nice thing about Maxtor is that they provide warranty and exchanges for ANY of their drives, including OEM. They are the best in support and warranties in the industry.
IBM does not cover any of their OEM drives under warranty, they won't even send you a replace. Seagate and WD provide warranty services on a case-to-case basis, and most of the cases there is a timeline you can get an exchange.
With Maxtors, there are no limitations, which means that for the money you put in them you will get the worth of them.