The DiamondMax Plus 45 achieves a
sequential transfer rate of 32.6 MB/sec in its outer
zone. Though such a figure places the drive ahead of the 25 MB/sec - 30 MB/sec we saw from 10 GB/platter units, it's still notably lower than the 37.2 MB/sec achieved by the 15 GB/platter
IBM Deskstar 75GXP. The Maxtor's transfer rate, however, "decays" more gracefully as data moves inward. Inner
tracks weighed in at 21.7 MB/sec, faster than IBM's inner score of 19.7 MB/sec.
With a measured access time of 12.9 milliseconds, this Maxtor is no Fireball Plus LM. This figure is, however, a significant improvement over its predecessor, the DiamondMax Plus 40, and the swiftest score we've recorded from Maxtor to date. It seems that Maxtor's reasoning against a fourth platter is vindicated.
We'll move on now to some WinMarks as we start to assess what improvements these figures yield.
WinMarks...
