Quantum Atlas V 18.3Gig Ultra160 SCSI Drive

Name: Quantum Atlas V 18.3Gig Ultra160 SCSI Drive - Page 2
Brand: Quantum

by HH Editor — Saturday, December 15, 2001, 11:00 PM EDT

Quantum's Atlas V Ultra160 SCSI Hard Drive
SCSI One-Ups EIDE Again!

Test System

HotHardware's Set up with a new twist

Full Tower ATX Case w/ 300W PS, Pentium III 500E overclocked to 750MHz. (supplied by Outside Loop Computers), Tyan S1854 Trinity 400 Motherboard, 128MB PC133 HSDRAM from EMS, Quantum Atlas V 18G Ultra160 SCSI Hard Drive, Adaptec 29160 Ultra160 64 bit PCI SCSI Card (also supplied by Outside Loop Computers ), Elsa Erazor X2, Pioneer 10X DVD/40X CD ROM, Win 98SE, DirectX 7.0a

Installation / Setup With The Ultra160 SCSI Interface

Typical SCSI, painless...

Life was good indeed, when we set up the Atlas V on our new Adaptec 29160 card. The usual concerns for proper termination need to be observed but other than that, things couldn't be easier. Of course you do require an Ultra160 SCSI Card like the Adaptec, to run this drive at the new Ultra160 spec. However, it also supports legacy Ultra2 and Ultra SCSI connections. Ultra2 will give you a max burst transfer rate of 80BM/sec and Ultra SCSI gives you 40MB/sec. So you ask, "why not go top notch with Ultra160"? Our sentiments exactly.

Here is a shot of the Adaptec 29160 Ultra160 Card that we used for the tests.

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That is some serious hardware you are looking at! This card is a 64 bit PCI card. Take a look at the edge connector. It has twice the number of pins as a standard 32 bit card. However, you can plug the 29160 into to any standard 32 bit PCI 2.1 compliant slot. You'll still get Ultra160 performance but Adaptec notes 64 bit PCI will give you optimal performance. Unfortunately, there aren't any standard PC motherboards that support this yet. As you may know, this is in the works currently. In any event, we had no performance issues with a 32 PCI set up. More on this later.

Also, take a look at the Ultra160 LVDSE Cable! Talk about pin/wire count!

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The drive partitioned and formatted quickly and Windows 98SE recognized the drive as having the full 18.3 Gig capacity. This was a refreshing change as some of the other drives we have tested, fell slightly short of their specified capacity after set up. Quantum gives you the full specified capacity here.

A Word On QDT

Quantum's new Quite Drive Technology (QDT) is more than just a marketing gimmick. Once we had the drive set up and running, it was amazing to actually hear the difference versus one of our WD DMA66 drives. The only way I can explain it was that the drive sounds muffled. The Atlas V actually sounds like it is encased tighter with better sound dampening construction within the unit. This is definitely the quietest drive I have ever heard.

The drive also runs fairly cool. It is warm to the touch but not hot when under heavy use. While idle in our case (which admittedly has lots of ventilation) it remained cool.

The numbers don't lie... Benchmarks this way!