MaximumPC 2006 01

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JANUARY 2006 MA XIMUMPC 5

BEST RECORDABLE DVD MEDIA

Can you trust your burned DVDs?

With optical drives sinking to vending-

machine prices, Maximum PC turns an

eye to the other side of the equation—the

media. We didn’t need tests to confi rm that

all optical media is not created equal, but

counting coasters is not exactly the best

way to investigate disc quality.

We created several test DVDs from

four major manufacturers with Plextor’s

PX-716A burner, then used PlexTools

Professional XL to check two metrics—

PIF (parity inner failures) and POF (par-

ity outer failures). PI failures report how

many uncorrectable errors were found

per error-correction block; it sounds

scary, but these are common and can

be fi xed by your drive’s error-correction

gizmos—a quality disc shouldn’t return

more than four of

these. PO failures,

on the other hand,

are very bad news,

signaling an error-

correction block

that is likely irrepa-

rable. Therefore,

a disc should not

return a single POF.

In our tests,

Fujifi lm was the

clear leader in

disc quality, followed by Memorex and

Verbatim, with Maxell bringing up the

rear with barely acceptable results.

Remember, however, that brand-name

resellers sometimes switch their suppli-

ers, so we recommend using a disc diag-

nostic like PlexTools (www.plextools.com),

Kprobe (www.cdrlabs.com/kprobe/), or

CD/DVD Speed (www.cdspeed2000.com,

also bundled with most versions of Nero)

to determine how reliable your media is

for those backup jobs that are matters of

life and death.

But using even the most reliable

media in the whole wide world doesn’t

supercede common-sense precautions

for valuable archives, such as turning on

data verifi cation in the burn process and

handling your media with the same care

you would with Grandma’s bone china.

Handle with care: Even the most reliable DVD media relies on

protection from scratches, fingerprints, and acidic alien blood.

BENCHMARKS

MEMOREX FUJIFILM VERBATIM MAXELL

PI FAILURES 4 2 6 8

PO FAILURES 0 0 0 0

While PI failures are common and usually correctable, a high number means your disc is more prone to failure from normal wear and tear.

100GB platters to achieve its compara-

tively low capacity of 400GB.

You can’t judge a drive by the spec

sheet, however. Despite being tied with the

Maxtor drive for the highest areal density,

the Seagate drive reports relatively low read-

speeds, especially compared with the Maxtor

drive and the WD Caviar. All four drives per-

formed very close in the Application Index

test, with the only “low” score registered by

(once again) the Seagate 7200.9 drive.

The WD drive took the honors in both

our real-world tests, while the Maxtor and

the Seagate drives rang up top scores in

our fi le-server IOMeter testing.

Though we don’t specifi cally measure

noise output with a microphone, all of the

drives were “quiet” to our ears, especially

at idle. You can’t even tell they’re running.

During seeks, the Seagate drive was slight-

ly more audible than the rest, but it was by

no means loud. On the temperature front,

the Hitachi and Seagate drives reported

operating temps almost 10 C hotter than

the WD and Maxtor drives.

THE BOTTOM LINE

In light of our test results, it’s clear there’s

one drive here that kicks all kinds of ass—the

Maxtor DiamondMax

11. However, there’s a
    catch—and it’s a big one.
    When we fi rst hooked
    the DiamondMax to our
    nForce4 test bench, we
    could only read from
    the drive and not write
    to it. We got a second
    drive and suffered the
    same problem. It turns
    out there’s an incom-
    patibility between this
    drive and our nVidia chipset, which is a huge
    fi asco. We’re even more concerned because
    Maxtor had the exact same problem with the
    DiamondMax 10! It’s inexcusable, and there-
    fore drops Maxtor from contention.
    Seagate obviously didn’t make the
    podium with its surprisingly sluggish
    7200.9 drive, which posted slower average
    sequential read speeds than its previous

generation 7200.8 drive, for Pete’s sake.

Although its Application Index performance

is slightly improved and it’s 100GB larger

than the previous drive,

the performance difference

between the two “genera-

tions” of drives is surpris-

ingly similar.

Hitachi’s 7K500’s stint

at the top of the bench-

mark charts was short-

lived thanks to the arrival

of the WD Caviar SE16,

which again owns the high-

est spot on the podium.

The Caviar also won our

“Gear of the Year” award (December

2005), and it will be retaining our recom-

mendation until Maxtor fi xes its issues.

Though it offers 100GB less capacity than

the other next-gen drives, it more than

makes up for this defi ciency with its cool

and silent running and blazing-fast perfor-

mance—in all of our benchmarks. This is

truly a spectacular hard drive.

CUDDLE

Extremely fast, very quiet,

sexy even.

WC CAVIAR SE

16 400GB (WD400KD)

HUDDLE

100GB less than its com-

petitors.