Fastest IDE Hard Drive Ever: IBM Deskstar 75GXP

Features
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Test Setup

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Test System
CPUIntel Celeron, 500 MHz
MotherboardAsus CUSL2, i815 chipset
RAM128 MB SDRAM, 7ns (Crucial/Micron or Wichmann Workx) CL2
IDE Controlleri815 UltraDMA/100 Controller (ICH2)
Graphics Cardi815 On-Board Graphics
Network3COM 905TX PCI 100 MBit
Operating SystemsWindows 98 SE 4.10.2222 AWindows 2000 Pro 5.00.2195 SP1
Benchmarks and Measuring
Office Applications BenchmarkZD WinBench 99 - Business Disk Winmark 1.2
Highend Applications BenchmarkZD WinBench 99 - Highend Disk Winmark 1.2
Additional Content Creation BenchmarkZD Content Creation Winstone 2000
Performance TestsZD WinBench 99 - Disc Inspection Test
Temperature MeasurementsUsing the motherboard's monitoring port and a thermistor, we give you the highest temperature value measured on the drive's surface. All drives ran two hours to ensure they were at working temperature.
Noise MeasurementWe built our own noise measurement crate to avoid influences from other noise sources.
Environment Settings
Graphics DriverIntel i815 Reference Driver 4.2
IDE DriverIntel Busmaster DMA Drivers 6.0
DirectX Version7.0a
Screen Resolution1024x768, 16 Bit, 85 Hz Refresh

Regular readers of Tom's Hardware Guide may wonder why I changed the motherboard from the IWill W100 (Intel 810 chipset) to the Asus CUSL2 (Intel 815 chipset). The most important reason is of course the DTLA drive, which comes with an ATA/100 interface. Asus' CUSL2 motherboard uses the I/O Controller Hub 2 (ICH2), featuring an UltraATA/100 controller. In order to get full software support, I also upgraded the IDE drivers from version 5.01 to 6.0.

Thanks to the fact that there is no need to run any graphics benchmark in order to test hard drives, the performance difference between the 810 platform and the now used 815 motherboard is almost zero. BAPCo's SYSmark 2000 did not show a difference in two of three runs - enough proof for our purpose. Also the ZD Content Creation Winstone confirms equal performance.