Maxtor took its 7200rpm Serial ATA hard drive range to 300GB this week, rolling out two new models with big on-board cache buffers.

Both new DiamondMax 10 drives sport 16MB of cache, and support native command queuing (NCQ) to boost data throughput. The extra cache ensures more data can be made ready for fast transmission to the host PC. NCQ is a key component of Serial ATA II and re-orders instructions to read or write data to improve access times.

NCQ operation requires a host controller capable of supporting the technology. Maxtor was quick to point out that Intel's latest desktop chipsets, the i915 Grantsdal' series and the i925 Alderwood range, offer NCQ support.

The drive maker also said it had integrated a second drive control processor dedicated to data transfer.

Pricing was not disclosed, but worldwide availability is immediate. A Parallel ATA version will ship at the end of Q3. ®

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