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Maxtor 300 vs Seagate 300 SATA
A Review comparing the Maxtor 300GB SATA to the Seagate 300GB SATA when used as a Macintosh G5 Boot Drive
By Arthur Whalem
What is the Best Macintosh G5 Boot Drive?
For the past five months, I have been using a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 L01S300 300GB SATA hard drive in a PowerMac G5 2.0Ghz Dual with great success. The Maxtor 300GB is faster than the stock 160GB that came with the PowerMac G5, quiet, supports NCQ and has a 16MB cache. The PowerMac G5 and the iMac G5 can both use this drive internally as they support SATA 3.5" drives. The L01S300 is the retail version of the Maxtor 300GB SATA that you will find at your local computer store and it comes with a one year warranty. Maxtor also produces an OEM version DiamondMax 10 6B300S0 with a three year warranty and the MaXLine III model 7B300S0 with a five year warranty.
The Maxtor 300GB SATA hard drive is a great performer in the PowerMac G5. I thought it would be interesting to see how it might compare against the Seagate ST3300831AS Barracuda 300GB 7200.8 Internal SATA Hard Drive with NCQ. The Seagate comes with a five year warranty even in the retail box version which is very nice. There are several reviews on the internet which discuss using Maxtor and Seagate 300GB SATA drives in RAID configurations on a Macintosh. There are also several reviews discussing the use of Maxtor and Seagate hard drives with a PC. However, I have not seen any detailed reviews using a Seagate 300 SATA as a Macintosh G5 boot drive. This article explains how the Seagate 300 and Maxtor 300 hard drives compared when tested as internal boot drives using a PowerMac G5 2.0GHz Dual with Mac OS X 10.3.9.What is Native Command Queuing (NCQ)?
Seagate explains the function of NCQ in simple terms as, "Somewhat similar to an elevator. The elevator travels sequentially from floor to floor and lets people on and off. It does not follow the sequence in which users push the floor request buttons, because that would mean an excessive mechanical load and much longer times for waiting or riding." An SATA drive that supports NCQ uses an internal queue to dynamically reschedule actions in the most efficient manner. It monitors existing drive requests and allows computers to add additional commands while the drive continues to update and complete the existing queue of requests in a logical order. The drive should function faster and more efficiently when NCQ is working correctly. For more information on NCQ there is a joint white paper in PDF format on this topic authored by Intel and Seagate at this link.
Performance
Both the Seagate 300 and the Maxtor support NCQ. However, when a drive is mounted on the PowerMac G5 2.0GHz Dual SATA main internal bus, NCQ will not function, as the PowerMac G5 does not support NCQ directly (as of May 2005). To enable NCQ, a FirmTek SeriTek/1V4 four port internal SATA PCI-X host adapter was utilized which does support NCQ on a PowerMac. It uses the Intel 31244 PCI-X to Serial ATA Controller chip to perform this function
Test #1Using Drive Genius 1.1.1 the read and write performance benchmarks were recorded for each drive and they are displayed in the graphs below. The Seagate results are shown in green and the Maxtor data is blue.
Sustained Read
Seagate 300GB is green. Maxtor 300GB is blue.
In the Sustained Read test the Maxtor 300GB SATA hard drive beat the Seagate by a small margin with both drives delivering over 32MB per second performance.
Sustained Write
Seagate 300GB is green. Maxtor 300GB is blue.
In the Sustained Write test above the Maxtor 300GB SATA hard drive pulled ahead of the Seagate substantially in all but the smallest file size.
Random Read
Seagate 300GB is green. Maxtor 300GB is blue.
In the Random Read test the Seagate 300GB SATA hard drive outperformed the Maxtor for the first time in the middle file sizes of this test.
Random Write
Seagate 300GB is green. Maxtor 300GB is blue.
In the Random Write test the Maxtor 300GB SATA hard drive once again pulled ahead of the Seagate substantially. The real question is how will these Drive Genius "benchmarks" stand up compared to actual usage with the drives?
Test #2In this test, the Maxtor 300 and the Seagate 300 SATA drives each have the same 137GB of data on them and were mounted as boot drives on a PowerMac G5 2.0GHz with 3GB of memory. Several boot configurations were tested. Each drive was booted and tested on the PowerMac G5 while on the "A" SATA internal drive bus, the "B" SATA internal drive bus, the FirmTek 1VE4 external SATA card (Slot 4) and on the FirmTek 1V4 internal SATA card (Slot 3). Energy settings were on highest and the drives were not allowed to sleep. A 4.25GB folder (containing two video files) was copied to and from a Maxtor 300GB SATA dual drive RAID located on the FirmTek 1VE4 in a FirmTek dual drive SATA enclosure. The Maxtor 300 and the Seagate 300 were booted from each configuration. The copy time was recorded along with the time to repair permissions and duplicate the same 4.25GB folder on each drive. Xbench readings of the drive performance and the overall computer performance were also recorded as a reference for this data.
| Maxtor 300 SATA | Internal A | Internal B | 1VE4 (Slot 4) | 1V4 (Slot 3) |
| Copy 4.25GB to RAID 1VE4 | 1:21 minutes | 1:24 minutes | 1:24 minutes | 1:29 minutes |
| Copy 4.25GB from RAID | 1:24 minutes | 1:24 minutes | 1:25 minutes | 1:25 minutes |
| Repair Permissions | 2:08 minutes | 2:11 minutes | 2:01 minutes | 2:07 minutes |
| Duplicate 4.25GB | 2:59 minutes | 3:07 minutes | 3:04 minutes | 2:59 minutes |
| Xbench Disk/Overall | 137/211 | 136/212 | 129/209 | 137/214 |
| - | ||||
| Seagate 300 SATA | Internal A | Internal B | 1VE4 (Slot 4) | 1V4 (Slot 3) |
| Copy 4.25GB to RAID 1VE4 | 1:25 minutes | 1:28 minutes | 1:27 minutes | 1:30 minutes |
| Copy 4.25GB from RAID | 1:28 minutes | 1:28 minutes | 1:28 minutes | 1:29 minutes |
| Repair Permissions | 2:42 minutes | 2:43 minutes | 2:40 minutes | 2:33 minutes |
| Duplicate 4.25GB | 3:43 minutes | 4:08 minutes | 3:51 minutes | 3:57 minutes |
| Xbench Disk/Overall | 101/182 | 96/180 | 104/183 | 98/180 |
As you can see above, the Maxtor 300GB SATA was slightly faster in the copy test, 12-20% faster repairing permissions and 15-30% faster duplicating the 4.25GB folder. It was interesting that the G5 internal "A" bus seemed to have a slight advantage over the "B" SATA drive bus. If you have both a FirmTek 1VE4 and a 1V4 card I would suggest using the 1VE4 in slot 4 as it seems to work best there while the 1V4 seems to work quite well on slot 3.
Test #3Retrospect was used to backup 137GB of data between each drive using the Seagate 300 on the 1V4 SATA host adapter and the Maxtor 300 on the stock PowerMac G5 SATA bus or the 1V4. Configuring both drives on the 1V4 and leaving the stock PowerMac SATA bus empty with the Maxtor copying to the Seagate provided the fastest combination. The Maxtor 300GB formats to a capacity of 279.35GB and the Seagate 300GB formats to a capacity of 279.33GB.
| Backup 137GB | ||||
| Copy | Average MB/minute | Copy MB/minute | Verify MB/minute | Time in Hours |
| Maxtor 300 (1V4) to Seagate 300 (1V4) | 1804 | 1719 | 1899 | 2:37 |
| Maxtor 300 to Seagate 300 (1V4) | 1604 | 1579 | 1630 | 2:51 |
| Seagate 300 (1V4) to Maxtor 300 (1V4) | 1555 | 1303 | 1926 | 3:01 |
| Seagate 300 (1V4) to Maxtor 300 | 1519 | 1274 | 1880 | 3:06 |
In the test above different combinations produced significantly different results while using the same drives. The best performance was achieved by backing up from the Maxtor to the Seagate. It is surprising that there is as much as an 18% performance difference between these setups.
Test #4In this test, Photoshop CS was used to determine how the Maxtor 300 and Seagate 300 would compare when used as scratch disks. The memory cache setting in Photoshop was set to 107MB and a 363MB TIFF file was opened with each drive configured as the scratch disk. The file was then rotated by 30 degrees. This forced Photoshop CS to use each drive as a scratch disk for these actions as the file was larger than the memory cache. A dual 300GB SATA Maxtor was added to this test as a comparison.
| Drive | Open 363MB TIFF | Rotate 363MB TIFF 30 degrees |
| Maxtor 300 SATA | 51 seconds | 194 seconds |
| Seagate 300 SATA | 78 seconds | 213 seconds |
| Maxtor 300x2 RAID | 35 seconds | 126 seconds |
The results indicate that the Maxtor is up to 30% faster at opening the 363MB TIFF file than the Seagate 300 and almost 10% faster when rotating the image 30 degrees. The RAID test indicates that if you work with large files as a graphic artist a Maxtor 300x2 RAID can reduce your wait time.
Discussion
As you can see from the tests above the Maxtor 300 SATA beat the Seagate 300 SATA in all of our tasks and most of the bench marks. The Maxtor 300 SATA has the ability to duplicate a folder faster than any other 7200 RPM drive I have tested. A 15-30% faster file duplication capability translates into higher performance. The Maxtor 300 SATA with 16MB cache performed very well. If you plan to expand your internal boot drive storage or to use a FirmTek external SATA enclosure for more drive space, I would recommend the Maxtor 300GB SATA with a 16MB cache over a Seagate 300 SATA drive. I have tried to find a drive task where the Seagate 300 is faster than the Maxtor 300 but so far I have been unable to do so. While some bench marks display that the Seagate 300 can exceed the Maxtor, I have not seen the Maxtor 300 come in second to the Seagate 300 in a real world test.
Pros
Maxtor 300 SATA
Performs better than the Seagate 300 in these tests.
Faster Finder duplicate.
Faster repairing permissions.
Great internal boot drive performance.
Works well with or without NCQ capable computer.
MaXLine III model 7B300S0 has a five year warranty.
Quiet, low heat.
Seagate 300 SATA
Performs well as a Maxtor backup drive, especially with the 1V4.
Five year warranty.
Quiet, low heat.
Cons
Maxtor 300 SATA
Maxtor 300 L01S300 retail version only has one year warranty.
Seagate 300 SATA
Slower overall performance than the Maxtor 300.
Usually costs as much as the Maxtor 300 SATA.
Seagate 300 SATA gets 3 AMUGs out of 5!
These tests convinced me that the Maxtor 300 SATA is a better boot drive for the PowerMac than the Seagate 300 SATA. I was amazed at the difference in the Drive Genius Benchmarks and the fact that the Seagate 300 can take up to 30% longer duplicating a 4.25GB folder. In my opinion, the Seagate 300 SATA is an average boot drive when used with a Macintosh G5 in comparison to the Maxtor 300 SATA. On the other hand, these tests showed that the Seagate 300 SATA is a good backup drive for the Maxtor 300 especially when used in combination with the bootable FirmTek SeriTek/1V4 four port internal SATA PCI-X host adapter. If you already have a Seagate 300 SATA you might consider using it as a backup drive for a Maxtor 300 SATA on a FirmTek SATA host adapter. If and when Seagate releases a 16MB cache version of this drive we may have a "Grudge Match" on our hands.
Contact Information:
Seagate Technology
920 Disc Drive
Scotts Valley, California 95066
Phone: 877-271-3285
http://www.seagate.com/contact
Maxtor 300 SATA gets 4 AMUGs out of 5!
While the Maxtor 300 SATA demonstrated it is an awesome boot drive for the Macintosh G5, the one year warranty on the L01S300 retail version is skimpy in comparison to the five year across the line warranty offered by Seagate. While you can get the MaXLine III model 7B300S0 with a five year warranty, most consumers do not know about it. Maxtor should consider a five year warranty for the consumer model too.
Contact Information:
Maxtor Corporation
28202 Cabot Road, Suite 425
Laguna Niguel, CA 92677
Phone: 949-347-7808
PanAmSales@Maxtor.com
http://www.maxtor.com/
Copyright 2005
Arizona Macintosh Users Group, Inc. (AMUG)
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