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Introduction
IBM Disk Drives have a long established history of
about 40 years. Till today, they have maintained a good name in providing good data
storage reliability and fast performance with their disk drives. IBM offers a wide
array of high-end desktop, server and mobile drives to meet the needs of the worldwide
market IBM has invested heavily on their research to satisfy the increasing needs of
the consumer market. For example, TravelStar, DeskStar and UltraStar. They have made
several breakthroughs like the Magnetoresistive Extended (MRX) advanced head technology
and Giant Magnetoresitive (GMR) head technology.The IBM 14GXP is their newest
product which is also rated as the "SCSI Killer".
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The Good
The IBM's DeskStar 14 GXP is
latest model that make us of the GMR Head Technology. This technology is designed to
enable MR Heads to be scaled to very small dimensions while achieving unprecedented areal
densities approaching about 10 GB per square inch. In conventional MR sensors, a single
film changes resistance in response to chnages in a magnetic field on the disk; GMR
Technology achieves its superior areal density by performing this same function by
employing two films, separated by a very thin electrically conducting layer. Phew!
That's GMR Technology!
This drive works best with Home
applications, Office applications, PC System Storage, Video Editing, Image storage,
Database processing and Multimedia applications. Basically, this drive is an all-rounder.
Another point worth a mention is
that this drive is spinning at the Fastest IDE rotational speed of 7200RPM and best of all
it is cool and not noisy consider spinning at such a high speed. In addition, this drive
has a low 9.5 ms average seek read and all IBM DeskStar drives comes with a Three Year
Warranty.
Lastly, the IBM 14GXP
14.4 GB is currently the highest capacity IDE disk drive available in Sim Lim Square,
Singapore. The selling price of this disk drive is at a low of S$ 798 (dated 05 September
1998) which means S$ 0.053 for 1 MB.
The Test
Test Configuration |
|
Processor(s): |
Intel Pentium II 400 Mhz |
RAM: |
64 MB Hyundai PC100 SDRAM
DIMMs |
Hard
Drive(s): |
Quantum SE 2.1 GB |
Video
Card(s): |
Matrox Millenium G200 (8MB
SDRAM - AGP) |
Bus
Master Drivers: |
Windows 98 Bus Mastering
Drivers |
Video
Drivers: |
Matrox Millenium G200
Drivers 4.10.01.4100 |
Operation
System(s): |
Windows 98 (build
4.10.1998) |
WinBench
98 Result for IBM DeskStar 14GXP 14.4 GB
Weighted
Suite |
IBM
DeskStar 14 GXP |
Unit |
Business
DiskWinMark 98 |
1840 123 |
Thousand
Bytes/sec |
High-End
DiskWinMark 98 |
4900 123 |
Thousand
Bytes/sec |
Test |
Disk
PlayBack / Bus |
|
Overall |
1840 |
Thousand
Bytes/sec |
Disk
PlayBack / HE |
|
Overall |
4900 |
Thousand
Bytes/sec |
Disk
/ Read Random Access |
12.3 123 |
Milliseconds |
Disk
/ Read Transfer Rate |
|
Beginning |
13300 |
Thousand
Bytes/sec |
End |
10600 |
Thousand
Bytes/sec |
Disk
/ CPU Utilization |
5.36 12345 |
%
Percent |
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The Bad
There are no major technical defects to this drives
in general. But if you really have to be strict about it, one of the bad point I can think
of is the fact that if you have just one 14.4 GB harddisk rather than one 8.4 GB and
one 6.4 Gb, this could render you very vulnerable to inconveninence due to the hard disk
crashes if there should be any. Basically, the flexibility of the system is reduced. Other
than that perhaps the one time payment of the S$ 798 could put you off and to go for 8.4
GB instead.
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Conclusion
Ever since IBM invented the world first
drives in 1956, they have been keeping up with the advancement of storage technology to
cater for the ever demanding consumer needs and IBM DeskStar 14 GXP is another of its
breakthrough. If you are not particular about the one time payment of S$ 798, then I would
gladly recommend this fast monster sized "SCSI Killer" drive to you.
Overall Rating (Out of
a maximum of 5 Star) |
Installation |
**** |
Performance |
***** |
Price |
*** |
Overclockability |
** |
Material
Quality |
***** |
Stability |
***** |
Overall
Rating |
**** |
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