Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB 16mb NCQ SATA $145 shipped (no mir)

No, DiamondMax10/MaxLineIII drives are SATA150, not SATA II (or 3gbps which is probably what you are interested in)
 
anyone know the deal with maxter SATA, are they dependable in a server environmnt? running 24/7 for a few years?
 
Don't know if that's a realistic question.

Across this board, you won't find a single Hot thread that doesn't give conflicting opinions about a particular company's dependability.

I think Maxtor's are great, but I can guarantee there will be someone who 'has a friend that used 4 beeeeelion maxtors and they all failed in 42 seconds.' As for SATA drives being reliable for a few years, isn't it still too early to say that?
 
Heh. When in doubt, in a critical server environment, a drive failure is not even close to being worth the money that you saved.
What I'm saying is, buy a server drive for a server.
 
im going to build a new computer at the end of the summer and i think this is a great deal, but im just not sure about buying one of these in case a better deal comes along in the next month or so
 
Dark Ember said:
No, DiamondMax10/MaxLineIII drives are SATA150, not SATA II (or 3gbps which is probably what you are interested in)
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The data transfer speed is limited by the mechanical parts of the drive itself, not the bandwidth of the interface. UATA/133 isn't even saturated. I wouldn't worry about it being SATA or SATA2 if I were you.
 
SidewinderX said:
The data transfer speed is limited by the mechanical parts of the drive itself, not the bandwidth of the interface. UATA/133 isn't even saturated. I wouldn't worry about it being SATA or SATA2 if I were you.
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I'm not "worried" about it. He was asking if they were SATA II (and most people think that means 3gbps interface), so I was answering his question.
 
I've got 4 of them and love them. Sometimes they are still flaky when using the NV RAID on nforce4 chipsets when you startup but that's very rare anymore since they updated the firmware for the raid controller.
 
bought it at over $200 6months ago , this HD is silent and efficient. Its rivals the raptor with the 16mb cache. Definetly one of the best I have ever used
 
Dark Ember said:
I'm not "worried" about it. He was asking if they were SATA II (and most people think that means 3gbps interface), so I was answering his question.
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You should watch out with making assumptions about "most people" you have never met before. Why does "everyone" immediately think of 3gbps when it comes to SATAII? There are several other specs inherent to the standard...most important of which is NCQ. Other features are hot plugability and something else...but I can't remember.

Anyways...do these drives have NCQ?
 
I can't comment on this 300GB drive, but I do have a 250GB DM9 something or other SATA150 drive. Bought it a couple years ago ($200 on sale at Fry's) and it has been trouble free. Well, at least until I tried hooking it up to my new A8N-E mainboard; at which point the controller refused to see the drive. In the end a firmware upgrade from Maxtor fixed the problem and once again it's happily humming along.

I'd be pretty tempted to buy this if I hadn't just "accidentally added" a new WD 80GB SATAII drive to my computer. (Ordered SATA for a client instead of PATA, whoops!) Otherwise I think I'd be all over it... gotta love big, cheap drives! :D

*edit* OK, NCQ = "Native command queuing for enhanced efficiency", now I know.

Regards,
fastgeek
 
monarchcomputer.com has 320gb SATA WD drive for $139 shipped with no MIR ($115 with $25 MIR)
 
joecool234 said:
You should watch out with making assumptions about "most people" you have never met before. Why does "everyone" immediately think of 3gbps when it comes to SATAII? There are several other specs inherent to the standard...most important of which is NCQ. Other features are hot plugability and something else...but I can't remember.

Anyways...do these drives have NCQ?
Click to expand...


Wow. I didn't say that I personally thought it meant strictly 3gbps.

Look, the SATAII "spec" is very confusing because drives aren't required to support all of the features (NCQ, 3gb, port multiplexing, hot swap, etc.). Since not everyone understands that, I was just trying to help people out. Geez.

Yes, DiamondMax10/MaxLine III drives have NCQ.
 
voldemort said:
monarchcomputer.com has 320gb SATA WD drive for $139 shipped with no MIR ($115 with $25 MIR)
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yes but with 8mb cache, this maxtor sports a 16
 
Maxtor's DATA SHEET says that the Drives are Second Generation Hard Drives and most of the time i have ever heard a drive being called that means that its SATA II ... for more information read this.... This will explain SATA II and 2nd Generation SATA which this drive is
The term SATA II has grown in popularity as the moniker for the SATA 3Gb/s data transfer rate, causing great confusion with customers because, quite simply, it’s a misnomer.

The first step toward a better understanding of SATA is to know that SATA II is not the brand name for SATA’s 3Gb/s data transfer rate, but the name of the organization formed to author the SATA specifications. The group has since changed names, to the Serial ATA International Organization, or SATA-IO.

The 3Gb/s capability is just one of many defined by the former SATA II committee, but because it is among the most prominent features, 3Gb/s has become synonymous with SATA II. Hence, the source of the confusion.

In reality, 3Gbps is only one facet of second-generation SATA. While we'll call the standard "SATA-II" for simplicity, bear in mind that the standard includes a few other features:


External SATA, or eSATA defines a new, more robust connector and cable lengths of up to 2 meters. Note that eSATA devices will typically run at 1.5Gbps.
Port Multipliers. Port multipliers are chips that allow one physical port to access up to 15 drives. Multipliers would be used in multidrive configurations to simplify cabling. Here's where the 3Gbps speed defined in the second generation standard can really have an impact. Note that generation-one SATA drives can connect to port multipliers.
3Gbps. Not all SATA-II devices are required to run at 3Gbps, but the increased speed is there for applications and drives that want to take advantage of it. 3Gbps drives are completely backward compatible—you can plug them into a first-generation SATA system, but they'll just move data at a maximum 1.5Gbps. Cables are compatible, and first-generation SATA drives will work fine in systems that support 3Gbps although the drives themselves will still be 1.5Gbps.
Native Command Queuing. NCQ can intelligently reorder commands as needed to improve performance.
A new, more robust cable connector that gives tactile feedback ("clicks") when you snap it in. But it's compatible with old connectors, and old cables can plug into a device with the new device connector.
Hot plug capability. This is pretty important for users of external drives, but also applies to server systems. The hardware now manages power and data integrity when drives are hot-swapped.
Click to expand...
 
Dark Ember said:
Wow. I didn't say that I personally thought it meant strictly 3gbps.

Look, the SATAII "spec" is very confusing because drives aren't required to support all of the features (NCQ, 3gb, port multiplexing, hot swap, etc.). Since not everyone understands that, I was just trying to help people out. Geez.

Yes, DiamondMax10/MaxLine III drives have NCQ.
Click to expand...

Whoa homie...chill. I wasn't trying to attack you. You seemed to me to be someone that is a victim of "bigger is better." Honestly, I have yet to see any benchmarks or real world tests where a 3gbps interface provides any tangible benefit over SATA150. NCQ is the main determining factor (across drives with the same rotational speed, of course) in distinguishing faster drives.
 
joecool234 said:
Whoa homie...chill. I wasn't trying to attack you. You seemed to me to be someone that is a victim of "bigger is better." Honestly, I have yet to see any benchmarks or real world tests where a 3gbps interface provides any tangible benefit over SATA150. NCQ is the main determining factor (across drives with the same rotational speed, of course) in distinguishing faster drives.
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And you're correct. 3G doesn't offer any performance benefits with today's drives. Today's fastest SATA drives don't even saturate a 133MB/s pipe. In fact, all first generation SATA drives -- including the Raptors -- were PATA drives at heart with an onboard SATA-to-PATA bridge controller, effectively capping performance at the 133MB/s PATA spec, which no drive has ever reached anyhow.

As is common, the interface bandwidth is being scaled up to make way for faster drives in the future. Also, if multi-drive finally becomes commonplace (as was promised back when SATA initially emerged) so that multiple drives will daisy-chain off a single cable, I would expect the higher bandwidth to improve performance.

NCQ doesn't even offer much of a performance boost with most desktop applications, according to the benchmarks I've seen comparing NCQ and non-NCQ drives. Servers and other high I/O applications benefit the most. Games and typical desktop apps really do not.

The biggest practical benefit to SATA so far has been the reduced clutter and increased airflow from ditching those wide 80-pin cables. Beyond that the drive manufacturers really haven't taken advantage of the technology. I wish more optical drive manufacturers than Plextor would produce SATA drives, so that PATA controllers could hurry up and disappear from mobo's. But virtually all have said they have no immediate plans to produce SATA drives, until the market demands them, because there *really* is no performance benefit to SATA with slow optical drives that don't even hit UDMA66 speeds as it is. Hot plug support would be nice for opticals I suppose, but there just isn't enough market currently.
 
Malatov said:
...I wish more optical drive manufacturers than Plextor would produce SATA drives...
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I agree with you there, would be nice to eliminate the regular 40pin/80strand cables all togetgher; although rounded/sleeved cables do help. I've been meaning to try using a couple of PATA to SATA adapters that came with one of my MB's on my optical drives... just keep forgetting to do so. :p

Regards,
fastgeek
 
fastgeek said:
I agree with you there, would be nice to eliminate the regular 40pin/80strand cables all togetgher; although rounded/sleeved cables do help. I've been meaning to try using a couple of PATA to SATA adapters that came with one of my MB's on my optical drives... just keep forgetting to do so. :p
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Ah, yeah, I meant 40-pin. Was thinking "80-wire" as I typed that. :)

I'm using the PATA converters on two MaXLine II 250GB drives in a RAID0 array on the VIA SATA RAID controller on my K8V SE Deluxe board. They work fine. This is actually my 3rd SATA RAID0 array where I've used the converters, and I've never had a problem with them. I have the nice HighPoint converters in the enclosed plastic case, not the exposed PCB versions that Asus and some other vendors shipped.
 
joecool234 said:
Whoa homie...chill. I wasn't trying to attack you. You seemed to me to be someone that is a victim of "bigger is better." Honestly, I have yet to see any benchmarks or real world tests where a 3gbps interface provides any tangible benefit over SATA150. NCQ is the main determining factor (across drives with the same rotational speed, of course) in distinguishing faster drives.
Click to expand...

Sorry for misinterpreting your post...

Not quite though. I never stated that 3gbps acheived any real benefits. I'm well aware that drives these days still don't come close to saturating ATA100/133, much less 3gbps.

I have to disagree with you though, about NCQ. NCQ can have benefits in certain situations, but having a large buffer with a good buffer scheme is more the determining factor for most users. Server environment is a different story, but thats not what I'm talking about. NCQ generally has minimal benefit for most desktop usage.


dasaint said:
Maxtor's DATA SHEET says that the Drives are Second Generation Hard Drives and most of the time i have ever heard a drive being called that means that its SATA II
Click to expand...

And this isn't right. Just because they are Maxtor's second gen SATA drive, does not mean its SATAII. The first generation used SATA bridge chips from Marvell to acheive the sata interface with a PATA pcb - DiamondMax9/MaxLineII. The second generation -DiamondMax10/MaxLineIII - employ a native SATA solution rather than the bridge chip. This runs at 1.5gbps, and features a host of other features as well. However, they are not SATAII. SATAII didn't exist yet during most of the development of that drive.

The description you posted of SATAII while correct, does not apply to this drive.
 
Dark Ember said:
The description you posted of SATAII while correct, does not apply to this drive.
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This is where you are wrong if you would like to take it from Maxtors Website...


MaXLine III
250GB and 300GB capacities
SATA or PATA interface
7200 RPM
16MB cache buffer
Designed for 1 million hours MTTF
SATA II features, including:
- Native command queuing
- Hot plug
- Staggered spin-up
- Asynchronous signal recovery
Five-year limited warranty
RoHS compliant version available

now if this drive didnt have SATA II why would it say that it has SATA II Features?

http://www.maxtor.com/en/products/ata/enterprise_applications/

also if u check Newegg's Website for the Diamondmax 10 6B300S0 which was the 1st development of the drive, which is the same as this one. under the specs it says
SATA II features -NCQ [Native Command Queuing]

However, they are not SATAII. SATAII didn't exist yet during most of the development of that drive.
Click to expand...

prove your statement.
 
Apallohadas said:
Don't know if that's a realistic question.

Across this board, you won't find a single Hot thread that doesn't give conflicting opinions about a particular company's dependability.

I think Maxtor's are great, but I can guarantee there will be someone who 'has a friend that used 4 beeeeelion maxtors and they all failed in 42 seconds.' As for SATA drives being reliable for a few years, isn't it still too early to say that?
Click to expand...

Well, sata is just an interface and mechanically ide and sata the basically the same so it might be safe to say that the reliability is comparable.
 
dasaint said:
now if this drive didnt have SATA II why would it say that it has SATA II Features?
Click to expand...

Thats the whole problem. SATA II isn't a standard, so you can support some SATA II features without being fully SATA II compliant. Thats what makes this whole thing confusing to people. To be labelled as SATAII, the drive must meet a specific set of compliance points relating to features, NCQ behavior, behaviors with COMRESETs (software settings preservation), error conditions with FIS operations, and interface power management. This drive doesn't meet all of the compliance points therefore cannot be SATAII.

dasaint said:
prove your statement.
Click to expand...

I can't, really, so you're welcome to disregard it. :( Technically it did exist, but most of the features hadn't yet been laid out for it. It had been planned out on a roadmap for the SATA interface, but the features had not been nailed down yet. Granted they still aren't either. So I guess I technically mis-spoke.
 
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