Maxtor DiamondMax 10 250 GB

I have now been using this drive for over one month after waiting to gather all the components for my HTPC (Home Theatre PC). What do I think of this drive?

I think that it is the best drive I have owned yet! Not only is the storage capacity great on this drive but it is lightning fast (compared to my old Diamond Max IDE Drive) and is also very quiet. The bios recognised the device instantly and with SATA cables being used instead of IDE, this gave my Silverstone case some extra space for air to help cool my system down.

I have Windows Media Center 2005 loaded onto this drive and saw a few recommendations for this drive when using a HTPC. My system is linked to Sky Digital through a Hauppauge PVR card which is able to record straight onto hard disk without the need for a Sky+ Box.

I fournd that the drive is able to record to a very good quality. When playing back recorded material from Sky the drive is very quiet and makes no undue backgroung noises that impair the listening of any recordings. You'd be hard pressed to know if you were watching a recording or direct from your Sky box!

In general use when accessing large files there is some noise from the drive however this is minimal. Having a Media PC I had to test out the drive to see what recorded music and movies would be like to watch using the drive.

As I listen to music a great deal whilst working/surfing, or is it the other way around, I found that there is not a great deal of noise generated when either when starting a new track or when the drive is accesing the next track.

Movies are similar although there were a couple of times where the system stalled slightly although this didn't appear to be related to the drive.

When using Copernic to access files, the drive flew through the task very quickly. Some noise could be heard although again this was not unacceptable.

There have been no lock ups of the drive or any errors to thus far, to date this drive has just be chugging along like a thoroughbread.

The only minus is that their is no manual as such although for a hard drive this isn't really needed. All the details you could require are online and if that's not good enought there is great technical support on offer.

I am currently thinking of purchasing at least an additional drive as I'm looking to catalogue all my vinyl onto my system and from what I've experienced so far, this is the drive to do it...

This drive is definately recommended.