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The benchmark results came somewhat unexpected. Not only do they show that the GXP series is, in fact, faster than the D740X series but also show they very clearly that there is a substantial gain when using an external ATA133 controller, even if the drive used is only a UATA 100 drive. None of this shows in any of the synthetic benchmarks but this is not too surprising, after all, synthetic benchmarks are what they are: synthetic

Why is the 60GXP so much faster in these applications when it lags behind the D740X in synthetic benchmarks? Earlier, we mentioned the Tagged Command Queuing and Rotational Position Optimization as performance optimizers specifically in a Win NT and Unix environment. There are no options to disable these features, otherwise, we would have gone that extra step to check the efficacy of these features that in a trivial way can be compared to prefetch logic. As it stands, we can only mention these features and marvel about their functional impact.

The "Gretchen Frage" of course is, whether the 60GXP is, in fact, the better drive and there are other factors, reliability in particular, that come to mind. The 60GXP is certainly much more reliable than the earlier 75 GXP, I have about 10 of these drives running day in and out and while some of these drives have died as well, it should be duly noted that in any test lab drives take severe beatings and the resulting stress is orders of magnitudes above what the average user would throw at the drive. With the Maxtor series, based on a single drive and about 3 months flawless operation we can only speculate about their overall reliability but so far so good.

The last issue before wrapping this up is the question about customer service. Neither Western Digital, Quantum, Maxtor or IBM have ever given us reasons for concern ot complaints but still, there are subtle differences. The main difference from a user perspective is that Maxtor as well as Western Digital offer advanced replacement shipments. That means that a replacement drive is shipped with a credit card number as collateral and if the defective drive is received back within a fortnight, the billing is not further processed.

RMAs with IBM rather follow the traditional scheme of sending the defective drive in for testing upon which a refurbished drive is being sent out to the customer. In most cases, it does not take more than 10 days to two weeks but that is still a very long time. Long enough to go to the next Staples or BestBuy or Fry's and grab one of these Maxtors..

Special Thanks to Violet Perez, IBM, Glen S. and Mark J. at Maxtor for their patience and help.

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