Maxtor's DiamondMax 10 A Jewel Reviewed

Maxtor DiamondMax 10

The Maxtor DiamondMax 10 is not particularly new, but it is a popular drive. After releasing our reviews of the Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 and the Western Digital WD3200 , our readers asked for benchmark numbers on Maxtor's current DiamondMax 10. From a technical point of view, the drive is the same as the MaXLine III that was presented in the second half of 2004; the only differences are the validation process and a longer warranty period. But since our MaXLine III drive was a pre-production sample, here is our review of a current model.

The DiamondMax 10 and MaXLine III were the first desktop hard drives to be equipped with a full 16 MB cache memory. This additional buffer space can increase drive performance under certain circumstances, mostly in multitasking environments. However, an average user will not notice much of a difference between running a drive equipped with 2, 8 or 16 MB cache.

Still, there are ways of squeezing more performance out of a disk drive with a larger cache memory. One is command queuing (NCQ), which has become an integral part of most native Serial ATA hard drives. First generation SATA drives were equipped with a converter chip, a so-called bridge, in order to make an UltraATA design attachable to SATA controllers. Assuming the drive is being operated with a NCQ-enabled controller, it is capable of reordering outstanding commands so they can be executed at maximum efficiency. Consequently, a larger cache memory should allow cache algorithms to be adjusted to the improved conditions.

Unfortunately, Maxtor does not offer 8 and 16 MB cache versions in the same capacities, which makes it impossible to compare apples to apples. However, we will dedicate another article to command queuing soon.