DiamondMax VL 40GB Drive

DiamondMax VL 40GB Drive
Manufacture: Maxtor
Price:
Reviewed by:
Date : May 03rd 2001

Introduction

Hard drives have evolved significantly over the past few years. There was a time when 1GB of storage space was considered to be extremely big. Today Maxtor holds the world record for the highest capacity drive with their 80GB Diamond Max drive. With Maxtor's recent merger with Quantum they have been able to create a deeper impact in the hard drive arena.

Maxtor is already renowned for their high performance, reliable drives; and their after sales service is still to be beaten by another competitor. Maxtor offers three ranges of drives to suite changing user needs and budgets. The DiamondMax Plus series caters to the performance seeking folk. The DiamondMax range is for the average user while the DiamondMax VL range is catered to the budget conscious.

In the past we have enlightened you on Maxtor's DiamondMax Plus range and the DiamondMax range. Today we take a look at their VL (Value Line) range; the DiamondMax VL 40GB drive. At the outset, the DiamondMax VL 40 is a 5400RPM drive, with a 2MB Cache buffer. The drive features two platters with a density of 20GB and it is ATA/100 compliant. Even though this drive is intended for the value market, Maxtor has been able to cramp in all the goodies we look for in a high-end drive and yet keep the price down. This is the competitive edge Maxtor has over most of its competitors. What most manufactures do with regard to low-end drives is that when they increase the capacity of the drive they reduce the cache memory of the drive in order to reduce cost. Believe me, cache is very important, especially when the drive capacities go beyond the 20GB mark. If the drive does not contain at least 2MB of memory the performance drop is very significant.

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