Just days ago in our IDE Hard Disk Drives with 8MB Cache-Buffer roundup our own Nikita claimed that the DiamondMax Plus 9 lineup of HDDs from Maxtor is based on 60 and 70GB platters instead of 80GB platters depending on the model. It seems that he is [as always] fully right, but, apparently. there are, at least, some DM+9 hard disk drives based on the “fair” 80GB platters!

A reader pointed out that his new Maxtor 6Y080L0 is faster than the drives that were tested by our specialists for the review. He noted that the linear read speed in the beginning of his disk was 60MB/s, 10MB/s more than on all the 60GB platters-based HDDs tested by us and 4MB/s more compared to a Maxtor disk with 70GB platter. Summing up all the facts we easily come to a conclusion that a number of Maxtor HDDs implement 80GB platters!

How to distinguish between the “old” and the “new” 6Y080L0 HDDs? Well, there are two main differences between them:

• The new disks are flashed with new firmware: YAR41BW0, while all the 60GB platters-based HDDs our Nikita has seen were flashed with YAR41VW0.
• The HDDs with newer firmware seem to be manufactured not earlier than in mid-December.

Both points have not been confirmed and we cannot guarantee that the facts are right. At this point all we can is to allude and seek for the truth.

Honestly speaking we have no idea why Maxtor had decided to utilise slightly outdated 60GB platters, but there can be two reasons here. Firstly, Maxtor used to have technical problems with 80GB platters and rolled-back to good-old 60 and 70GB devices. Secondly, Maxtor simply had loads of old platters and utilised them in their new HDDs.

If you happen to buy a DiamondMax Plus 9 HDD one of these days, be sure to grab a newer version: they are considerably faster!