Quantum Fireball Plus LM Review

Another Look at the Disk Transfer Test Results

Just from reviewing the results in the disk transfer tests, one would think that the Quantum Fireball Plus LM performs about on par with the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus drive. Most people will look at the benchmarks and assume that since the Quantum unit makes a comeback, and actually scores higher on the inner tracks, that the overall results between the two drives are about equal. While they are very similar overall, we felt we needed to show some additional information in this situation.

The problem with displaying just the starting and ending scores; is that the graphs are not always linear, and you cannot accurately gauge the average transfer rates just by these two figures alone. Normally, a drive will produce similarly higher, or lower, results at both ends of the test, so those two scores are adequate to represent the overall results. However, in a situation such as this, one must review the entire test graph to get an accurate representation of the results.

So to that end, in order to help give you a better picture of the true transfer rates between the two units, we have included screenshots of the two completed disk transfer tests graphs. These graphs were generated right from the benchmark program, during one of the trial runs, under the Windows 2000 portion of the tests. Since the disk transfer tests produced uniform results across each run, these graphs are representative of all 5 trials. We chose to compare the Quantum disk transfer test results with that of the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40 results, as these two drives had the most similar performance.

We also should point out, that in order to compare apples to apples, we used a 30 GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus unit for this test. We chose to do this because we felt it would be easier to compare the two tests with drives of the same capacity. We did run the 30 GB unit through all of the same tests, as the original 20 GB Maxtor drive, just to verify all the test results were the same, and to make sure our results are consistent.

In this first graph, we have the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus results:

One of the things to look at is the crossover point to below 27 MB/s, or where the Quantum drive starts out. We can see that the Maxtor is able to maintain data transfer rates at, or above, 27 MB/s, to just about midway through the test, or roughly the 14 GB mark on the graph. The second spot we want to look at is the point where the transfer rate falls below 25 MB/s. With the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus drive, the crossover happens slightly past the mid-point of the platters, or about the 19GB area. The last spot to place close attention to, would be the crossover to under 20 MB/s, which happens at the very end, or near the 28 GB mark.

In the second graph we have the Quantum Fireball Plus LM results:

Here we can see that the Quantum unit starts out at about 27 MB/s, and holds a fairly constant output until about midway into the platters. Again looking at the two crossover points as before, we can see that the Quantum drive first drops under the 25 MB/s mark roughly in the same area as the Maxtor drive, or the 17.5 GB area. The last crossover, to under 20 MB’s, comes at the very extreme inner tracks, so much so, that the benchmark program averages it back to 20.3 MB/s.

Although the second half of the graphs are pretty close, we can still see that both drives actually fall under the 20 MB/s mark at the very end of the tests. The first half of the tests show the story though, as the Maxtor unit is able to keep its data transfer rate at, or above, the Quantum drives peak transfer rate of around 27 MB/s.