Maxtor Atlas 10k IV

Maxtor Atlas 10k IV Capacities Model Number Capacity 8B036L0 36 GB 8B073L0 73 GB 8B146L0 146 GB Lowest Real-Time Price: Introduction 10,000 RPM SCSI product release cycles have become a bit predictable over the past few years. Seagate was always first in delivering next-generation product. Fujitsu would follow with its offering that would trump Seagate in server performance while not quite measuring up in single-user scenarios. Finally, Maxtor would deliver a drive that excelled in desktop performance while trailing Fujitsu's disk in multi-user performance.

Things are a bit different this year, however. IBM was the first to the plate with a "next generation" unit, though the Ultrastar 146Z10's areal density doesn't quite stack up with the competition. Seagate followed with the Cheetah 10K.6. Next on the scene was Fujitsu's MAP3147. In a pleasant surprise, Fujitsu managed to strengthen their line's single-user performance. The net result? The MAP current rests above offerings from both IBM and Seagate in server and desktop speed.

So then, where does Maxtor's Atlas 10k IV sit in this mix? Like the Cheetah 10K.6 and MAP3147, the flagship Atlas features four 36-gigabyte platters to pack 146 gigabytes of storage into a low-profile chassis. Like its competitors, the Maxtor comes equipped with an 8-megabyte cache. Maxtor claims an average read seek time of just 4.4 milliseconds, the most ambitious claim we've yet seen for a 10,000 RPM drive. Unlike Seagate and Fujitsu, Maxtor sticks with a traditional ball bearing motor rather than the fluid dynamic bearing motors found on the Cheetah and MAP. A five-year warranty protects the drive.

The Atlas 10k IV is one of the first Ultra320 SCSI drives to hit our testbed. Ultra320's most highly-touted feature, of course, is an increase in the throughput ceiling to 320 MB/sec. Keep in mind that the current transfer rate champion, the Cheetah 15K.3, pushes 76 MB/sec in its outer sectors. While figures like these threaten Ultra2 SCSI's 80 MB/sec barrier, Ultra160's 160 MB/sec limit maintains plenty of headroom. It is only in multi-drive scenarios that 160 MB/sec bottlenecks arise. Our base drive tests occur with a single unit as the only active device on the host adapter. In such a setup, any performance advantages that Ultra320 (along with the requisite higher-bandwidth 64-bit PCI slots) would deliver over 160 are negligible. For our performance tests, we're going to take advantage of the specification's backwards compatibility and run the drive in Ultra160 mode off of our current host adapter. Bear in mind that improved bandwidth is only one of the benefits that Ultra320 delivers. A host of improvements in protocol and error correction should elevate data integrity and device interoperability to new levels.

Maxtor makes much ado about its implementation of adaptive active filtration (AAF), dubbed MaxAdapt. AAF purportedly improves signal strength and integrity over traditional (pre-compensation) methods to further increase performance, decrease data error rates, and improve device compatibility and interoperability.

How does this final member of the class of 2002 stack up? Let's find out!