The Maxtor DiamondMax 6B160M0 160Gb hard drive is a good backup drive.
Written: Nov 06 '09 (Updated Nov 06 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: 7200 RPM, NCQ, Fluid Dynamic Bearings and low noise operation
Cons: Slow performance will affect your ability to multi-task.
The Bottom Line: The low price and stability of the Maxtor 6B160M0 SATA hard drive provides 160Gb of capacity to keep your digital photos and MP3 music files safe.
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| rgathright's Full Review: Seagate DiamondMax® 10 160 GB SATA Hard Drive |
I trust the Maxtor brand to give me the most reliable product and the Maxtor 6B160M0 160Gb SATA hard drive is a shining example of that. While the drive may be a little slower than newer products on the market today, you can still expect it to hold up for years to come just like mine have. As you read this review, take note of how the drive performs and see if it is right for you.
Maxtor 6B160M0 Suggested Uses And Operation
In the past, I have used this product in an configuration of four drives on an Adaptec 2410SA hardware raid card to create a high speed RAID 0 disk drive in Windows XP SP2. The Maxtor performed flawlessly in this role and emitted little sound with four 7200 RPM hard disks spinning simultaneously. You would compare the sound to a single 80MM x 80MM computer fan spinning fast.
In single drive mode, the 6B160M0 is still a good product that I use on a daily basis with several computers. Over the years, I have given all but one of these hard drives to friends while repairing their computers. The reason is that the drive almost always seemed to have faster access speeds than other SATA I drives of the generation. The quiet operation of this drive meant that you could barely hear it over the sound of an Intel Socket 775 processor fan.
Overheating has never been an issue for me with the Maxtor 6B160M0. The drive runs cool at 85 degrees Fahrenheit in a well ventilated computer case.
Why does my Maxtor Diamond Max 160Gb SATA hard drive have NCQ?
The Maxtor Diamond Max 10 series of hard drives feature a speed enhancement called Native Command Queuing or NCQ for short. NCQ was added by Maxtor to increase performance of the SATA hard disk by allowing the individual hard disk to internally optimize the order in which received read and write commands are executed. The technology can reduce the amount of unnecessary drive head movement; the head is attached to the actuator arm. As a result, your read and write operations can be a little faster. To take advantage of this feature you will need to make sure your motherboard’s file I/O controller issues NCQ commands.
Performance Testing The Maxtor 6B160M0 160Gb SATA
Determining the true speed of a hard drive is tough because you have to find a motherboard capable of generating enough I/O traffic that it will eclipse the SATA interface speed of the drive. I used an Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 and MSI G31M3-L V2 Desktop Board to put the drive through a good test. The boot drive was a Patriot 32Gb SATA SSD running Windows XP Pro SP2 with the 160Gb Maxtor Diamond Max 10 SATA drive operating as a spare and formatted using NTFS full partition size.
Real World File Transfer; I created a new folder with 133 MP3 files across 4 subfolders for a total of 714Mb and transferred it from the Patriot 32Gb SSD. A test like this will tell you how fast the drive can copy large amounts of files in Windows XP SP2. The results were not very impressive when compared to the speed of the Seagate 2Tb SATA II Barracuda hard drive which passed the same test in 12 seconds.
Here are the actual results:
Run #1, 16 seconds
Run #2, 17 seconds
Super Pi V1.1 is an application that extrapolates the specified digits of PI into a text file. The quick writes to the hard drive exhibited by the 3.33Ghz Intel processor are a good measure of gaming performance. Video games often demand fast write performance while moving between stages. My conclusion from this test was that the hard drive has very hard time keeping up with the file requests of a modern computer.
Using the Intel E8600 processor, here are the results of two runs at 32 million digits of PI:
#1; 8 minutes 37 seconds ERROR NOT EXACT IN ROUND
#2; 14 minutes 13 seconds
HD Tach Version 3.0.4.0 was used next to test the burst, cpu, random access and sequential read of the hard drive. The benchmark is a widely recognized standard in the industry today. Wow, I never realized how slow this hard drive was until now. Compared to the new SATA 2.0 Seagate 2.0 TB hard drive, the scores are almost half! In fact, a newer drive like the Seagate 2 Tb can achieve a Burst Speed of 233.3 Mb/s in the HD Tach benchmark.
Here are the results of three runs at Long Bench setting (32mb zones):
#1 Burst Speed: 120.4 Mb/s, Average Read: 44.0 Mb/s, CPU Utilization: 1%, Random Access: 13.6ms
#2 Burst Speed: 120.5 Mb/s, Average Read: 48.9 Mb/s, CPU Utilization: 2%, Random Access: 13.5ms
#3 Burst Speed: 120.4 Mb/s, Average Read: 45.3 Mb/s, CPU Utilization: 2%, Random Access: 13.5ms
As a final test and experiment to satisfy my need for speed, I plugged an Adaptec 2410SA hardware raid card into a free PCI slot on my MSI motherboard. The 160Gb Maxtor hard drive was recognized because it was firmly within the card’s readable capacity range. Working with the Adaptec 2410SA raid card also means that this drive will work with most SATA drive connectors on both motherboards and RAID cages. Again, HD Tach Version 3.0.4.0 was used next to test the burst, cpu, random access and sequential read of the hard drive.
Here are the results of three runs at Long Bench setting (32mb zones) using the external Adaptec 2410SA hardware raid card:
#1 Burst Speed: 80.2 Mb/s, Average Read: 41.8 Mb/s, CPU Utilization: 0%, Random Access: 13.4ms
The Maxtor 6B160M0 160Gb drive slowed down when used with my PCI based hardware raid card on the MSI G31M3-L V2 Desktop Board. You will notice that the CPU Utilization went to zero. A hardware raid card relieves the processor of file system tasks. Consider this if you wish to build a high performance gaming computer or server, because hardware raid card can free up some needed CPU cycles. The only catch is that they cost several hundred dollars in SATA II versions.
Product Specifications
Manufacturer: Maxtor
Brand Name: Diamond Max 10
Hard Disk Capacity: 160Gb
Spin Speed: 7200 RPM
Features: Fluid Dynamic Bearings, NCQ (Native Command Queuing)
Interface: SATA I
Buffer Size: 8 Mb
Weight: 1.3 lbs
Warranty: 3 Year Warranty
Summary
First, if you are just going to use this drive to store files as a secondary hard drive, go for it! The drive runs reasonably cool and is quiet so it will not interfere with the daily operation of your home computer.
However, I learned a lot writing this review. We now know that there is a lot going on beneath the cover of a SATA hard drive. A hard drive causing Super PI to crash is never a good thing. The slow performance of this drive in my Windows XP SP2 benchmarks was alarming to me. Until now, I never realized that using this hard drive as a replacement in my computers could affect my ability to multi-task in Windows but it clearly does. For this reason, I strongly recommend considering a newer SSD hard drive like the Patriot 32Gb if you are upgrading an older SATA I specification based computer for faster performance.
In all, I give the Maxtor 6B160M0 160GB Hard Drive a split decision, one thumb up and one thumb down.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
rgathright
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Member: Reuben Gathright
Location: Lake Charles, LA
Reviews written: 221
Trusted by: 130 members
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