Maxtor is a particularly well-known name in the hard drive sector. They have brought out a number of hard drives that have introduced new and unique technologies into their product lines. In the past, I have looked at Maxtor's original Serial ATA offering, their DiamondMax 9 hard drive, and more recently, I took a look at their native Serial ATA enterprise drive, the MaXLine III. The MaXLine III brought forth the first 16MB cache buffer I have seen. Today, I will be taking a look at Maxtor's DiamondMax 10 which sports a 16MB cache buffer, a 7200 RPM spindle, Native Command Queuing (NCQ) and capacities of up to 300GB.

Features of the DiamondMax 10
Here are a few of the basic features offered with the Maxtor DiamondMax 10 hard drive;

• Choice of parallel or serial interfaces
• Second-generation Serial ATA with 1.5Gb/sec interface speed
• Native command queuing
• Ultra ATA data transfer speeds up to 133MB/sec
• 8MB cache buffer for 80GB, 120GB, 160GB and 200GB drive
• 16MB cache buffer for 250GB and 300GB drive
• Fluid dynamic bearing motor for quiet operation
• Improved reliability with:
  ?Shock Protection System?BR>?Data Protection System

Detailed Specifications
Here is Maxtor's technical brief on the DiamondMax 10 specifications.

Performance Spec's Environmental Limits Rotational Speed 7200 RPM Temperature Buffer Size Operating (C) 0 to 60 80GB, 120GB, 160GB, 200GB 8MB Non-operating (C) -40 to 71 250GB, 300GB 16MB Shock External Data Transfer Rate(MB/sec) Operating Mechanical Shock 2ms (G) 60 Serial ATA 150 Non-operating Mechanical Shock 2ms (G) 300 Parallel ATA 133   Average Seek (ms) <9.0 Physical Dimensions Average Latency (ms) 4.17 Width (max mm) 101.6   Length (typical mm) 147 Reliability Spec's Height (max mm) 26.1 Start/Stop Cycles (min) >50 000 Weight max (LB) 1.39 Component Design Life (min) 5 years   Annualized Return Rate (ARR) <1.0%

What is Serial ATA?
I think that many people would agree that they know what Serial ATA (SATA) is and so I have provided a link to previous SATA reviews with a description of SATA for the convenience of those who don't know. Click here to get more information.
(http://www.bytesector.com/data/bs-article.asp?ID=250)

How does Native Command Queuing Work?
In this section, I will explain how a regular LCQ drive works and then compare that to how an NCQ drive works.

Since not all data is stored sequentially on the discs, the drive must build a queue of the data requested and order it (A, B, C, ?and so on) and then it will seek it out (as seen in the diagram below).

The drive doesn't take notice that ?C?is closer to ?A?than to ?B?and so it spins an extra time in order to access ?C?and then goes back to ?D.?Each rotation takes up precious time that is usually measured in milliseconds. Now, when you?re thinking, ?I have the extra 10ms to spare,?you aren't realizing that your hard drive doesn't waste just one rotation per 4 data requests (as depicted above). Data, especially when it is fragmented, can be scattered all over the hard drive and thus hundreds and possibly thousands of rotations are wasted in the constant search for data. This becomes a bottleneck which is usually blamed on CPU speed and the amount of memory in the system. Unfortunately, the reality of the matter is, the hard drive can be just as much of a problem when it is using LCQ (the method described above).