OEM HD's vs Retail, why is the Retail Drive so much faster ?

[Richard Cranium]

I've run HD speed utilities on many HD's, on the same mobo & CPU.

The "Retail" boxed HD's ALWAYS run faster than the OEM's ??

Is it the Maxblast or whatever software that formats the HD in 3 seconds vs the fdisk command that takes 20 minutes or what.

Even the 5400 rpm Retail Maxtors blow the OEM 7200 Maxtors out of the water, and BADLY !!

Like the 20+ units I got from Dell last Nov/Dec for $55.00 shipped.
Every one of those Maxtor & WD 7200 rpm units posted from 14-18 mb/sec transfer rate.

Insert a 5400 rpm Retail boxed Maxtor and it reads from 44-48 mb/sec, the 7200's show up to 57 mb/sec

Same mobo. same CPU, same Kingston Valueram, same HD utility..

[Mntsnow]

Interesting Doc. I've never noticed it....but then again I cant say I've really benched between the two in the same systems as I usually just built them and out the door they went...

[Richard Cranium]

The newest Maxtors are very thin and have an aluminum foil type cover on the top.

They also say something like Fireball something or the other..

These are the Hot Rods, don't seem to matter if it's 5400 or 7200

Comparing the specs of the older 7200's it looks like they'd be comparably fast, not by my benching software.

I'll get the .exe and send it to whoever's interested to check their results.

[speedman]

The Fireball is Quantums drive. Now owned by Maxtor.

You may have stumbled onto something here. I wonder if the OEM's didn't pass QC 100% but do work so this is how the pawn them off. They don't want Joe consumer to get these in a retail box so they bulk them out to builders in small shops and who knows who else...................:wtf:

[Richard Cranium]

Here's the little utility I've used..

Freeware.

DiskSpeed32
383 kb

http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/3000-2086-8930799.html?tag=lst-0-7

[Undeadlord]

I couldn't get that program from Zdnet .. there link to it seems to be down, but I found it here and git it just fine :)

http://www.majorgeeks.com/article.php?sid=1073&cat=7

Undeadlord

[NDC]

Is it the Maxblast or whatever software that formats the HD in 3 seconds vs the fdisk command that takes 20 minutes or what.

Well, MaxBlast that formats in fractions of the time vs. Full Format is pretty much the same as "Quick Format" in Windows. While full format scans the sectors for defects, Quick Format just erases the record in the MBR so the disk appears to have no data. It just basically erases the "Table of Contents" of a book and leaves the rest of the cotents so to explain... I doubt it has anything to do with what utility one chooses to format the disk that gives it different access time and burst rate. However, I have noticed quite a difference in access times FAT(32) vs. NTFS(5), about 20~25%... I use HDTach to benchmark my hard disks...

[Shyguy]

Originally posted by speedman
The Fireball is Quantums drive. Now owned by Maxtor.

You may have stumbled onto something here. I wonder if the OEM's didn't pass QC 100% but do work so this is how the pawn them off. They don't want Joe consumer to get these in a retail box so they bulk them out to builders in small shops and who knows who else...................:wtf:

Didn't IBM buy Maxtor lately, I remember reading an article about how some IBM drive boxes had maxtors in them then others had IBM's or was that another HD manufacturer?

[Richard Cranium]

Well, for the record, I've just tested my fastest drive to date.

A Maxtor 30g 7200rpm Retail.

It tested at 52 mb/sec SUSTAINED transfer rate.

The important thing on doing these type of tests is to use the SAME utility on all tests.