Maxtor Goes Serial ATA: The DiamondMax Plus 9 Gets Put to the Test

There's More To Come: MaXLine Plus II With Up To 250 GB

The DiamondMax Plus 9 is primarily designed for demanding multimedia requirements. For even more demanding applications, Maxtor has two further products in the works, namely the MaXLine Plus II and the MaXLine II. The latter is primarily designed for high capacities, and offers a mighty 300 GB.

Performance fans, however, will no doubt be particularly interested in the MaXLine Plus II. This has similar technical specs to the DiamondMax Plus 9, but scores higher with up to 250 GB and a laudable five-year warranty. Besides using it as a normal hard drive for the system memory, Maxtor envisages applications such as backing up large quantities of data or use in the NAS area (Network Attached Storage).

A test report on the MaXLine Plus II will follow shortly.

The Competition: 250 GB Also From WD

The announcement already made it to the press a few weeks ago: Western Digital has also boosted capacity per platter to over 80 GB. The first result will be a Caviar model with 250 GB capacity and three platters, 7,200 rpm and 8 MB cache.

We have also already mentioned the new WD Raptor, which will be the first ATA drive with 10,000 rpm. With the Serial ATA interface being used for the first time, a special feature is no doubt the long five-year warranty period. Western Digital is taking advantage of this opportunity to cater to the high-end sector.

Test Setup