This week Maxtor formally threw its hat into the 500 GB arena with the announcement of a trio of related offerings.
The traditional DiamondMax 11 extends upon the firm’s long-standing consumer offering by upping platter density from the DM10’s 100 GB/platter to 125 GB/platter and by returning to a four-disc design. The drive features a SATA II-style 300 MB interface and seeks are spec’ed at 9ms. Industry-standard features such as a 16 MB buffer, FDB motors, and NCQ round out the package.
Second up is the QuickView 500, a variant of the DiamondMax 11 targeting the massive storage requirements to record HDTV video. Ostensibly, the QuickView optimizes for the highly-streamed (sequential) DVR-style environment.
Finally, the MaXLine Pro 500 is to the DiamondMax 11 as the NL35 is to Seagate’s Barracuda 7200.8 or the Caviar RE2 is to WD’s Caviar SE. Intended for nearline and light-duty applications, the MaXLine builds upon the standard DiamondMax platform with a more rigorous assembly and verification process. The “Pro” designation is Maxtor’s way of indicating that the line finally incorporates enterprise-style features such as improved error recovery and vibration compensation. The firm continues to spec the MaXLine with a 1 million hour MTBF under a “40-50% duty cycle”, placing the drive somewhere between the Seagate NL35 (1 million, “nearline duty cycle”) and WD Caviar RE2 (1.2 million, “100% duty cycle”).
More information on these products may be found in Maxtor’s Press Release.
While the QuickView 500 remains out of SR’s current purview, we’ll try and bring readers a look at the DiamondMax 11 and MaXLine Pro 500 as soon as possible. Stay tuned!
