Maxtor's new drives...when are we getting liquid?

[Wandere]

The liquid bearing series of the famed D740X series should make a somewhat quiet drive even more quiet but I'm getting a bit tired of waiting. The one company on Pricewatch offering 'em has had a preorder status for them for months.

Perhaps Maxtor is having some QC issues? Seagate seems to have done well with the technology.

ETA thoughts? Let's hope it's not another nforce delay (waiting for a decent company to copy the reference design on that one too...)

 

[JmanSanDiego]

Tonight I ordered the 40Gb version of the "J" series with ball bearings. I figured, screw it, I've heard most say the drive is damn quite and my case sits pretty far from where I sit, so I figure I'll probably never hear it anyway. It is supposed to be a pretty good drive though, we'll see when I get it!

Jon

 

[Irascible]

I don't keep up on harddrives, so this may seem out of left field. In fact, when you mention "famed" I have no clue what you mean. But.... I bought a Fujitsu MPG3409AH drive that I can almost never hear. It has the liquid bearing and is fairly fast. I bought it specifically for quietness. It was mentioned as one of the quietest (or THE quietest, I can't remember) drives on the market in this THG article: http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/01q1/010102/index.html
The 40 gig model is actually the one you'd want since it's the fastest one with the liquid bearing. I hope this info was at least a little relevant.

 

[LXi]

The D740X is considered one of the fastest, if not the fastest of all, 7200rpm 2MB buffer IDE hard drive, I guess thats why he called it famed. The fluid bearings should decrease idel noise a bit, but it probably wont do anything to the seek noises. Even the Seagates are audible when seeking, although not very noticable. The term "silent" isnt exactly applicable to almost any 7200rpm hard drives. I personally got tired of waiting and went with the ball bearing version the one with "J" in the model#. The ones with "L" are the FDB.

 

[Wandere]

I hear ya Jman, pretty close to doing the exact same thing with mine. This 10 Gig IBM is gonna be replaced soon. WD is having some deals on their 80 GB models (~$150USD or so)

Yes yes...famed because this week it's the fastest widget....that title usually holds for about a week in this biz. Didn't mean to be misleading.

I've hit the other review sites and I'm starting to convince myself that I'll never be able to notice the small differences in performance between the Barracuda IV and the D740X (with L or J bearings) in my desktop environment.

I'm sending Maxtor an inquiry via e-mail. If I get any news, I'll post it.

 

[Bozo Galora]

A guy on another forum said if you rub the top of the drive very fast, after a while you can get liquid.


Hope this helps.

Cheers!

 

[Mem]

I got my Maxtor 40GB 740DX few days ago(normal non-fluid bearing version) and it`s fast and real quiet so anybody that`s worried about noise on this drive all I can say is what noise?

 

[Adul]

witht he fans in my case, i doubt I hear anything from the HD.

 

[BeauJangles]

I don't bother with quiet HDDs because they sit in the back of my case... thus I can never hear them.

 

[JmanSanDiego]

Yeah, I gotta tell ya.... The thing I'm worried about is the drive shipping with Accoustac Management mode turned ON! I hear this gives a fairly serious performance hit when enabled and maxtor provides now way of disabling it on their Website! They do list a utility but state to use it for "other" drives only.

I searched like a MAD MAN trying to figure out what the "best" drive was to buy, and even though I had always leaned on purchasing an IBM 60GXP, I went with the Maxtor because..... Why the hell not.... But I am definately convinced there is very little true performance difference between most of these drives. The only one that seems to stand out the most is the SE edition of Western Digitals 100Mb drive. I can't afford that so I had to choose something else.

 

[Bozo Galora]

why not the IBM 120GXP?

 

[Executor]

I just ordered a couple of Western Digital WD600BB HDDs for my RAID 0 Config. These drives have great, if not the best, throughput according to storagereview.com. The downside is that this series of Western Digital drives has high seek times, but I play games so seek time isnt really a factor for me. These drives are really quiet from what I hear. I'm going for a silent case

 

[grumm3t]

Do you have to buy any special cable to connect to an ATA133 controller to get full speed? Will a normal ATA100 cable work?

 

[flexy]

<< Yeah, I gotta tell ya.... The thing I'm worried about is the drive shipping with Accoustac Management mode turned ON! I hear this gives a fairly serious performance hit when enabled and maxtor provides now way of disabling it on their Website! They do list a utility but state to use it for "other" drives only.
>>



Well....then i'd recommend to search again...


* there are plenty of utilities to download from the maxtor site...the one for acoustic management is called "setacm.exe'"...it says

--- snip ---
Overview: The AMSET.EXE utility enables, disables, and sets levels for the Acoustic Management (operating sound levels) for the following hard drive Families (and newer) ONLY:

· DiamondMax 60
· DiamondMax VL 30
· DiamondMax Plus 40 UDMA/100
· DiamondMax 60 UDMA/100
· DiamondMax VL 30 UDMA/100

--- snap ---

since i consider the dx740 a successor of the diamondmax this utility should work !

Your statement "maxtor delivers all dx740 with acoustic management on and doesnt give a tool to switch it off....." ... it just doesnt make sense at all !

Why should maxtor deliver the hds with ACM on.....never heard of that...and even IF THEY WOULD.....you can switch it off with the above tool. It has 3 different settings:


/off Turns Acoustic Management off, the drive operates at normal
acoustic levels
/quiet Quietest seeks, the speed of the seek operation is reduced to its
lowest level to provide the quietest operations, this level has
the most impact on drive performance.
/fast Fastest seeks, the speed of the seek operation is reduced to provide
quieter operation with the least amount of impact on the drive
performance.


please next time before you post...do better research


(to verify that this utility actually works someone with a dx740 should just try to use it.....i can't right now since my system is not assembled yet and the dx740 is still in its box )

 

[zephyrprime]

<< Perhaps Maxtor is having some QC issues? >>



I think they are having some sort of issue. My friend works at a company that makes part of the controller logic for maxtor drives and he told me that Maxtor had to go back an completely redesign something or other in their new drives because of some sort of bearing issue. My friend doesn't know all the details but it seems logical that the problem is with the new fluid bearing drives.

 

[Pariah]

Maxtor inherited fluid bearings from Quantum. They shouldn't have had to do any development at all. The whole D740X line is Quantum drives, so I doubt they are having QC problems, they probably aren't in any hurry to release them as demand probably isn't that big. Most people don't care one way or the other.

 

[cuteybunny]

one of the reason I return it twice when i bought their 1.6gig long ago.



<< I just ordered a couple of Western Digital WD600BB HDDs for my RAID 0 Config. These drives have great, if not the best, throughput according to storagereview.com. The downside is that this series of Western Digital drives has high seek times, but I play games so seek time isnt really a factor for me. These drives are really quiet from what I hear. I'm going for a silent case >>