Fujitsu, just like Seagate, makes use of an aluminum case. This material seems to be best suited for heat dissipation. The drive heats up to 47 degrees Celsius, which is as hot as our reference hard drive, the Seagate ST320430A. Both drives should be installed correctly to make the heat dissipate over to the computer case. There was nothing to complain from the vibration point of view. Even though Fujitsu uses aluminum, the drive runs comparatively calm.
With this drive, the jumper descriptions are situated at the top of the drive on a sticker (see photo). Beginners possibly will not know on which side to start, but as the worst case scenario is a non-functioning hard drives, you will just have to move the jumper.
The 3204AH is an average performer. On the one hand, it is able to provide very high maximum transfer speeds, but it will also drop more than other drives. Its big advantage is the low noise level, which was not surpassed by any other candidate. The seek time was quite good both in Windows 98 and Windows 2000, making this drive best suited for data base applications or applications, which require lots of little file accesses.
Patrick Schmid was the editor-in-chief for Tom's Hardware from 2005 to 2006. He wrote numerous articles on a wide range of hardware topics, including storage, CPUs, and system builds.
