Last week Maxtor announced their new line of IDE hard disc drives with 80GB per platter areal densities. Although the drives may even be considered as revolutionary, Maxtor slashed the warranty from three to one year. Moreover, they company even does not even disclose mean time between failures for their new products.

The first model from the new line is called DiamondMax 16, as it represents the sixteenth generation of 5400rpm DiamondMax HDDs. The novelty is designed to offer 60, 80, 120, and 160GB capacities. I would like to point out that the 160GB product will utilise only two 80GB platters, hence, such drives are going to be cheaper than their predecessors with four platters, as a result, Maxtor will establish the new record in declining the cost of data-storage.

The second model is the DiamondMax 9 providing either 60, 80, 120 or 160GB capacities. These devices spins at 7200rpm, thus, offering more performance.

Both products will utilise either ball bearing or fluid dynamic bearing motor technology. As you can guess, the hard disk drives make use of Parallel ATA-133 interface. In December the company will also start shipping the Serial ATA-150 HDDs.

Another two newcomers from Maxtor are interesting because of the fact that they are only 17.5mm in height due to the fact that they make use of one platter and one read/write head. The Fireball 3 and the DiamondMax Plus 8 spin at 5400 and 7200rpm respectively, both offering 40GB capacity. The other specifications are pretty common: Parallel ATA-133 interface, fluid dynamic bearing motor technology and so on. I would like to stress that the linear read speed provided by the 5400rpm hard disk drive is more than the fastest 7200rpm HDD can offer these days – 49.5MB/sec.!

Currently, Maxtor appears to be the leader on the storage market in terms of technology, price and performance. Announcing their thin hard disk drives, the company may enter the market of embedded data storage solutions, like used in consoles, video-recorders, etc. However, those who buy the latest HDDs from Matrox should clearly understand that, firstly, the company offers only 1-year limited warranty, secondly, platters with 80GB areal density are less reliable than the platters with 40GB areal densities.