Is the hot, new Maxtor 40 gig the fastest Ultra ATA drive under $300?

I used to say the Seagate Barracuda 20 gig was the fastest Ultra ATA drive, but after reading the impressive press releases on the Maxtor 40 gig Diamond Plus 7200rpm, I couldn't wait to test it. Here's the test results rounded to the nearest whole MB/sec:  

 

 

 

Answer
The Maxtor 40g is fast but the Seagate 20g beat it in 2 out of three tests. Obviously, the Maxtor 40g is the better buy at $249 (CompUSA on Feb 27th). Both drives are faster than the Western Digital 20g ATA/66 drive shipped by Apple with certain models of G4 Sawtooth.

Related Link: How about an IDE RAID array using the Maxtor and Seagate?

 

Additional Observations:
I don't usually publish PEAK transfer rates of drives but it's interesting to note that I observed a peak rate of 49MB/sec on the Maxtor 40g and WD 20g versus 43MB/sec on the Seagate 20g.

Here's a flash for you Yikes owners. I tested the Maxtor and Seagate in a Yikes G4/400 as well as the Sawtooth G4/400 and got identical results. That and the fact that Apple uses an 80 conductor cable in the Yikes leads me to wonder if they use an ATA/66 interface in both models. My theory is that they wanted to make the Sawtooth sound worth the extra dollars initially so they said it had "ATA/33" while the Sawtooth had "ATA/66." Maybe the truth is that they both have the same controller but the Yikes came with an ATA/33 drive (Caviar) and the Sawtooth came standard with an ATA/66 drive (Expert).

The good news for Yikes owners is that your machine with a fast, UltraATA drive, does NOT take back seat to a Sawtooth. As for those of you contemplating a purchase of the current low end model of Sawtooth, you might be tempted to use "build to order" to upgrade your hard drive. Apple charges too much for the drive upgrades and doesn't give you credit for the drive you gave up! It's MUCH cheaper to just take the Caviar option and buy a faster, aftermarket drive like the Maxtor or Seagate. (Some companies will give you a trade-in allowance for the Caviar!)

Just for fun, I tested the Maxtor 40g on a pre-release Ultra ATA/66 PCI controller. It scored slightly higher sustained read/write speeds (25MB and 30MB/sec) in the ATTO benchtest than with the internal Sawtooth ATA/66 controller. Cool.

 

Reader Comments
READER: "I think you are being paranoid about Apple. There is no "Yikes ATA/33" conspiracy."
ROB ART: "Oh yeah? Well their tech docs say the Yikes' ATA/33 interface has a 'Disk transfer (sustained) rate: 8-12 megabytes (MB) per second.' I've observed sustained rates as high as 29MB/sec.

READER: "Your comparison of SCSI to IDE doesn't take into account that SCSI can handle multiple read/write requests simultaneously while the IDE controller can only handle one at a time."
ROB ART: "I think my test where I duplicate the three large files simultaneously on the same drive or array takes that into account. I already concede that one good Ultra2 SCSI controller is more than a match for two Ultra ATA/IDE controllers."

Test Configurations & Procedures

• The test machine was a G4/400 Sawtooth using the built-in ATA/66 interface.
• The drives were:
  Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40 40GB 7200 RPM UltraDMA/66
  Seagate Barracuda 20GB 7200 RPM ATA/66 (ST320430A)
  Western Digital Expert 20GB 7200 RPM ATA/66 (shipped with mid priced Sawtooth)
  Western Digital Caviar 10GB 5400 RPM ATA/33 (shipped with low priced Sawtooth)
• The ATTO disk benchmark was run using Express-Pro Tools 2.3 benchmark test with 8MB maximum file size and system disk cache disabled. Sustained Rate is displayed in the charts. Peak rates can be impressive but do not reflect typical drive performance.
• For the DUPLICATE THREE PHOTOS test, I copied a 27MB Adobe Photoshop document onto each drive and made three copies. Then I timed how long it took to duplicate the THREE copies of the photo (81MB total) on the same drive. That's a simultaneous read/write of 3 large files. Finally I calculated megabytes per second by with the formula: filesize * 3 (files) * 2 (read/write) / seconds.