Maxtor has released its latest high performance hard disk drive, named the DiamondPlus 40. The IDE 40.9GB drive is being marketed to appeal to multimedia users since its high spin speed (7200rpm) enables it to throw out large files, such as video clips, quickly. Mike Cannon, Maxtor's CEO, said the drive's speed would allow people to use IDE products where they would normally use SCSI, quoting online video editing as a typical application where the drive would come into its own. The drive has a 9ms average seek time, 2MB cache buffer, 100MHz SDRAM memory and a Maxtor proprietary processor. It will cost £229 and is available from January next year. ®