Maxtor intros monster drives

They're big

By Drew Cullen • Get more from this author

Posted in Personal, 13th September 2001 11:23 GMT

Free research: Application platforms, the state of play

Maxtor this week began volume shipments of a very big, very fast hard drive (HDD) and announced a even bigger, and even faster HDD, supposedly the biggest and fastest drive the world has ever seen. (Actually, the company is claiming the world's biggest desktop drive - Seagate has a 180GB monster.)

Shipping is the 80GB DiamondMax Plus D740X, the first 7200-RPM desktop hard drive with the new Ultra ATA/133 interface. This represents a 10 per cent performance improvement on the next biggest DiamondMax, Maxtor says. The model is aimed at mainstream business and consumer sectors and carries a suggested retail price of $249.95.

Announced is the DiamondMax D540X, the world's highest capacity ATA hard drive, according to Maxtor. The beast spins at 5400-RPM, delivers 160GB capacity through its four 40GB platters, and through use of the Ultra ATA/133 interface, transfers data very fast indeed. It's aimed at the enterprise storage market.

The HDD will ship early October, carrying a recommended retail price of $399.95. Maxtor will integrate The DiamondMax D540X into a "new enterprise-class file server" called the MaxAttach NAS 6000.

Both drives will be bundled with the Promise Technology ATA controller card "in select geographic locations" from October. The Ultra ATA/133 card is fully backward compatible with earlier ATA models, and Maxtor says. It will also retail as a standalone product.

The Maxtor press release is in full here. ®

Free research: Application platforms, the state of play