The Deskstar 120GXP incorporates both new and proven technologies to boost system performance. This drive provides the capacity and performance to handle a wide range of advanced... more
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A review by Dave_UK on IBM Deskstar 120GXP 100 GB December 5th, 2003
Author's product rating:
Memory / capacity
Excellent
Reliability
Excellent
Ease of Installation
Good - quick to install
Speed
Very fast
Value For Money
Excellent
Advantages:
Consistently fast, reliable, quiet
Disadvantages:
none (that I know of)
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
This is a great drive, that I bought about a year ago when I built my PC. I was looking for a good all round IDE hard disk - fast, reliable, and well priced. After reading various reviews, I discovered the best hard disk in its class. Was it a Maxtor? WD? Seagate? No - it was made by IBM.
>Price< The drives are selling in many places, such as dabs.com. The DeskStar line is extremely well priced, so price/performance ratio is excellent here if you are on a budget.
>Performance< I am a musician and I use digital audio/recording applications. These can be very hard-disk intensive, and the Deslstar 120GXP performs brilliantly. I also have a firewire-capable digital camcorder so I use the PC to edit digital video which is also very hard-disk intensive. Again, the drive performs competently. Seek times and transfer rates are top-notch. In fact, the disk performs quickly when loading/playing games, or any of the other myriad applications of today's PC's.
>Noise/Heat< The drive is also exceptionally quiet, even when being used intensively (e.g. Video Editing, Defragmenting) and therefore practical in an office/business environment. The drive itself also appears to be well-designed from a thermal perspective. My case temperatures are ok, and the drive does not appear to become overly hot, so I doubt you will need a seperate hard-disk cooler unless your ventilation is poor or you have lots of drives in a small case.
>Overall< Overall, this is a fast, quiet, reliable and well-priced drive. It has since been surpassed by the 180GXP version, and the technology has been acquired by Hitachi, but the drives are still great. Heartily recommended for all mainstream/performance applications on a budget.
Features: Temperature sensor, load/unload technology, No-ID, glass disk, TrueTrack servo technology, antiferromagnetically-coupled (AFC) media
Compliant Standards: S.M.A.R.T.
Performance
Drive Transfer Rate: 100 MBps (external) / 74 MBps (internal)
Seek Time: 8.2 ms (average) / 17.7 ms (max)
Track-to-Track Seek Time: 0.8 ms
Average Latency: 4.17 ms
Spindle Speed: 7200 rpm
Reliability
Non-Recoverable Errors: 1 per 10^13
Start / Stop Cycles: 40,000
Expansion / connectivity
Interfaces: 1 x ATA-100 - 40 PIN IDC
Compatible Bays: 1 x internal - 3.5" x 1/3H
Manufacturer's product description
The Deskstar 120GXP incorporates both new and proven technologies to boost system performance. This drive provides the capacity and performance to handle a wide range of advanced desktop and audio/video applications. Additionally, features such as low acoustics, low power, and Tagged Command Queuing make this drive ideal for non-PC, high-performance and special applications. AFC and glass disk technologies enable increased density. Thus, the Deskstar provides the necessary capacities using fewer heads and disks, which means fewer components and better reliability. The superior density combines with the faster processor and streamlined cache buffer to enable award-winning performance for both the Deskstar and your system. Enhancements to the servo system and thermal monitor help to enable accurate data storage and retrieval. These combined technologies enable popular capacity points and are also designed to increase reliability. Deskstar drives continue to utilize proven IBM technology such as TrueTrack servo and No-ID sector formatting.
Environmental parameters
Min Operating Temperature: 5 °C
Max Operating Temperature: 55 °C
Humidity Range Operating: 8 - 90%
Shock Tolerance: 55 g @ 2ms half-sine pulse (operating) / 350 g @ 2ms half-sine pulse (non-operating)
Vibration Tolerance: 0.56 g @ RMS (random) (operating) / 1.04 g @ RMS (random) (non-operating)
*Archos Gmini XS100 4GB of Storage*
4,000 MP3 storage on your portable player.
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Archos was established in 1988; they found there niche market in portable components for entertainment and digital storage around about the same... more
I bought my archos earlier this year. Since purchase of the archos i've had no problems with it whatsoever.
The archos has a very straight forward user interface so even beginners such as myself can be using it within minutes. I purchased my Archos with more
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