Why do people say Maxtor's Hds are faster?

[magomago]

►On Sale! WD WESTERN DIGITAL "SPECIAL EDITION" 80GB 7200RPM EIDE HARD DRIVE MODEL # WD800JB - OEM, DRIVE ONLY
Specifications:
Size: 80 Gigabytes
Interface: IDE ULTRA ATA100
Seek time: 8.9ms
RPM:7200
Cache 8MB





Maxtor 80GB 7200RPM Hard Drive 8MB Model # 6Y080P0
Specifications:
Size: 80 Gigabytes
Interface: IDE ULTRA ATA133
Seek time: 12ms
RPM:7200
Data Transfer: 133MB/sec
Cache:8MB


To the best of my knowledge (And I'm not all that knowledgable and get a large quantity from you Anandtechers ) Seek time is much more important. I also have heard that ATA66 was barely a jump over ATA33 so I'm wondering if I can apply this to the ATA100 and ATA133.

I ask this because it is oft quoted that Maxtor's 8meg hds are faster than their WD counterparts.

I don't have any bias towards anyone (if anything against WD) and have owned both types of HDs.

So...why is Maxtor said to be faster?

 

[BSOD]

Formatted capacity: 60, 80, 120 and 160GB
Average seek time: < 9ms
Rotational speed: 7200 RPM
2MB or 8MB cache buffer

http://maxtor.com/en/products/ata/desktop/diamondmax_plus_9/specifications.htm

 

[Adul]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/storage/8mb-ide-roundup/

well here is the WD drive getting owned

 

[TonyB]

if you're lucky enough to get a diamondmax 9 with 80GB platters you're looking at seek times under 9ms.. no idea how to find out which drives have them though, they're rumored to be 60, 70 and 80GB platter versions of teh same drive capacities.

 

[Pariah]

Never trust seek times quoted by manufacturers. Trust specs quoted by websites (looks like Newegg here) even less as they make many mistakes. The seek time for the Maxtor is wrong, not sure where they got that number, but it is way too slow for seek time, and too fast for access time.

As to which is faster, it depends on the benchmarks you look at, though not much. If you look at storage review's database, the WD has a pretty commanding lead no matter which platter size DM+9 you are looking at. The WD swept the office/workstation benchmarks and also swept the file server benchmarks as well as taking business disk winmark and one of the webserver benchmarks. The 80Gb/platter managed to win the high-end disk winmark and one of the webserver bm's, while the 68GB/platter version won the overall webserver title, taking the remaining 2 individual titles below it. If you take out the WD in the comparison, and just leave the 3 different platter sized Maxtor's what you end up with is a complete mess with no clear cut winner. Depending on the capacity you choose, the point is rather moot, as certain platter sizes only appear in certain capacities, with the same in reverse.

It should be added, that it doesn't really matter which drive you pick, they all perform pretty similarly when comparing same generation drives between the manufacturers. You would be hard pressed to tell any difference in blind tests. There is also no clear cut winner across the board, so matter which drive you pick, it won't be the fastest at everything compared to its contemporaries (15k.3 excluded from this discussion).

 

[Adul]

according to x-bit labs, drives made after dec are the 80 GB platter. well shouldbe at least

 

[pillage2001]

Why??? cause it's fast. Just because.

 

[jaeger66]

xbit's methodology is flawed. Recent articles from StorageReview have demonstrated that the best low level measurements like seek time don't really correspond to actual performance. The IDE drive with the lowest seek time ever recorded has been out of production for 2 years, so just looking at that tells you little. And Winbench and IOmeter(IOmeter has been abandoned by Intel but open source efforts may bring it up to date) are both obsolete in terms of real world performance.