Quantum Fireball Plus LM 30Gb

Monday, June 26, 2000

Introduction

The KX Quantum Fireball series of hardrives first made their appearance some time ago, and their performance made quite an impression. Still, the KX series didn't have much time in the spotlight, before being supplanted by the new LM series. The principal features that set the new series appart from the old is the inclusion of a 2MB internal buffer, an access time of 8.5ms, and capacities of upto 30GB. As you may guess, it's the 30GB model that we'll be testing here in this article.

So then, let's start off our evaluation by comparing the two generations of Fireball, and see if the LM series can cut the mustard.

The tests

All tests were performed under Win98.

The configuration of the test system was as follows:

Motherboard: Chaintech CT-6CTA2
Motherboard revision: Ver: 1.0
BIOS version: 01/25/2000
CPU: Intel Pentium III 450mhz
Memory: 128MB PC800 RDRAM
IDE Primary port master: Quantum Fireball LM30gig UDMA66
IDE Primary port slave: none
IDE secondary port master: none
IDE secondary port slave: Kenwood 52X True X
AGP port: GeForce 256
Graphics card drivers: Nvidia 4.11.01.0368
OS: Win98 built 4.10
DirectX 7.0a

Note: The Turbo frequency of 105Mhz was used for all tests.

The results

HD Tach 2.60
Read Data Transfer Rate test kb/sec.
HDD Max. Min. Ave. CPU Burst Mode Random
Access Time
Quantum KX 9.1Gb 21,089 12,875 17,137 4.1% 58.9 Mb/sec. 11.2 ms.
Quantum LM 30 Gb 27,284 23,942 26,233 5.6% 58,9 Mb/sec. 8.8 ms.

The results obtained under HD Tach 2.60 speak for themselves. It's easy to see that the KX drive was simply stupified before the awesome performance of the LM...


Winbench99

here again, we can see that the LM has an enormous advantage over the KX.



SisSoft Sandra
Hard Disk Drives Benchmark
HDD Drive Index
Quantum KX 9.1Gb 12,319
Quantum LM 30 Gb 15,480

Finally, the results returned by our SiSoft Sandra test back up the results of our other tests, and show a net superiority for the LM series over the KX.



Conclusion

In conclusion, it would be rather difficult not to appreciate the incredible advances in performance made by the Quantum LM 30GB. Its access times are very fast, its cache is an enormous 2MB, and its 7200RPM have added up to make one hell of a fast hardrive. In short, we throw our most fervrent recommendations behind this product.

For more information, visit Quantum.

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Specifications

10.2

15.0

20.5

30.0

Form Factor
3.5 inch
(low profile)
3.5 inch
(low profile)
3.5 inch
(low profile)
3.5 inch
(low profile)
Interface
ATA/4, Ultra ATA/66, Ultra ATA/33
ATA/4, Ultra ATA/66, Ultra ATA/33
ATA/4, Ultra ATA/66, Ultra ATA/33
ATA/4, Ultra ATA/66, Ultra ATA/33
Formatted Capacity (MB1)
10,273
15,020
20,547
30,020





Disk Drive Configuration





Recording Surfaces
2
3
4
6
ATA Logical




Cylinders
16,383
16,383
16,383
16,383
Heads
15
16
16
16
Sectors
63
63
63
63





Performance Specifications





Typical Seek Times2 (ms)


Average
8.5

Track-to-Track
0.8

Full Stroke
15

Average Rotational Latency (ms)
4.17

Rotational Speed (RPM)
7,200

Data Transfer Rates (Buffer-to-Host) (Mb/sec)


Ultra DMA/66
66.6

Ultra DMA/33
33.3

PIO Mode 4
16.6

DMA Mode 2
16.6

Buffer Size (KB)
2048 (2 MB)

Typical Power on to Drive Ready (sec)
15




Reliability Specifications



Start/Stop Cycles, Ambient
40,000

Nonrecoverable Data Errors (per bits read)
<10 per 1015

Warranty3 (years)
3




Physical Specification



Dimension-inches (mm)


Width
4.00 (101.6)

Length
5.787 (147.0)

Height

1.00 (25.4)

Weight-pounds (gr)
1.3 (580)




Environmental Limits



Operating


Temperature (oC)
5 to 55

Non-Condensing Humidity (%)
10 to 85

Non-Operating


Temperature (oC)
-40 to 65

Non-Condensing Humidity (%)
5 to 95

Sound Power (bels, typ)


Idle
3.6

Seek
4.3




Power Specifications



Nominal Voltage (V)
+5/+12

Voltage Margin (%)
±5/±10

Typical Power Draw (W)


Idle
6.9

Operating4
10.6

Peak Current (mA on +5V/+12V)

900/2,400






1. Quantum defines a megabyte (MB) as 106 or 1,000,000 bytes.
2. Seek times are at nominal conditions and include settling.
3. This warranty is standard when products are purchased directly through authorized Quantum distributors/dealers. Unless otherwise agreed, a one-year warranty is provided to all OEMs purchasing directly from Quantum. End-user warranties provided by computer manufacturers may vary.
4. Operating is defined as 40% seek, 30% read, 20% active, and 10% write.