Firstly a big HELLO to you Leonardo. Long time no see!

Secondly, I know you are interested in quiet And this post is more of an overview (Reprinted from: http://www.prosoundreview.com/showpr...php?product=65 ) of my HD experience. So I hope it helps:


I own nine DiamondMax Plus drives (2)ATA66 (4)ATA100 (3)ATA 133 And (1) Original Quantum Fireball which was bought out and is now supported by Maxtor. They have all worked after incredible amounts of abuse. Not a single RMA! I've owned (2) Segates-died (1)Western Digital-died. And I stay away from IBM due to the horror stories of others and the evasiveness of their presales support people.


I find that the Maxtor Powermax diagnostic tools found on their website to be excellent in terms of testing/troubleshooting (which should not be needed in most cases). MaxBlast Plus utility (also available on their website) has a faster partition/format program than Microsoft fdisk. This is ideal for your C:\ drive unfortunately at the time of this writing there is no way to format the audio drives for 32k clusters so you must use the Microsoft FDISK.exe and FORMAT.EXE programs. I have alerted Maxtor to the need for this option and they have thanked me for the suggestion. We’ll see.


More on audio drive formatting:


http://www.prosoundreview.com/forum/...s=&threadid=60


UPDATE:
Here's a response to my inquery. Let me say that Maxtor got back to me in less than 24 hours.


Merrick,


Our support staff can only make suggestions to the MaxBlast Development Team. The use of a 32K sized cluster is nice for those interested in performance over efficiency. However the draw-back that I usually see is that the use of 32K or 64K cluster sizes makes it so that the scandisk and defrag utilities do not function. This is most likely what the MaxBlast team discovered and therefor left it out of the program. The majority of end users stick with the default 16k cluster size. Regretfully you will have to resort to using the OS built-in formatting software for now until Microsoft can find a fix for the scandisk and defrag utilities in Win98.


My Reply:


Dear TSJoel61,
First let me say thanks for your quick response. Not only am I pleased with Maxtor's hardware [(9) DiamondMax plus and growing!], your excellent diagnostic and utilities but you guys are one of the fastest support responders in my experience.
Okay that said, let me respond to some things. I have never tried to make 64k clusters so I can't comment. However, I have been using a self built Digital Audio Workstation running original Windows98 for two years. True, my C:\ 15gig O/S program/ apps drive is running with 16k clusters but my D:\ 60gig+60gig Audio drive (RAID 0) has been running flawlessly with 32k clusters as have my E:\ 60gig and F:\ 60 gig backup drives. To date I have had no Scandisk or defrag problems. Yes the defragging of these drives does take a long time but high resolution 24bit/96KHz .wav files are huge. a 120MB .wav file is not unusual. Using the switch in pure dos at the A:\ prompt: Format X: /z:64 (where X is the letter of your audio hard drive) one can format without being locked into using the default format parameters in a typical windows install. This practice is quite well known among people in the digital audio and digital video industry. More here:
http://www.prosoundreview.com/forum/...s=&threadid=60
I humbly ask that you might allow me to speak further with a member of the MaxBlast Plus Team. The prospect of having this advanced option in a Maxtor utility could only add more incentive to the Digital Media Workstation builder considering a hard drive brand. I for one will continue to endorse Maxtor as I have since ATA66 days based solely on my pure customer satisfaction.


Sincerely,
Merrick
Bellsong Recording Studio


UPDATE:


Merrick,


I understand your stance on the issue. I myself have a linux digital audio system and understand the use of large cluster sizes is preferable for such large file sizes. I will certainly pass your request to my supervisor for examination, but please understand that I am the "low man on the totem pole."


Thank you,
TSJoel61


My Resopnse:


TSJoel61,
Thanks for the quick response. I guess the MaxBlast Plus developers prefer not to correspond with customers? I'd like to hear from your supervisor on why or why not this can't be pursued. I presume that I might be able to fit the Microsoft fdisk/format.com file on the same disk with MaxBlast Plus:

"FAT32 supports drives up to 2 terabytes in size." & "All of the Microsoft bundled disk tools (Format, Fdisk, Defrag, and MS-DOS- based and Windows-based ScanDisk) have been revised to work with FAT32. In addition, Microsoft is working with leading device driver and disk tool manufacturers to support them in revising their products to support FAT32."-Microsoft

That is good to know. But Microsoft Format takes 10 times longer than MaxBlast

I'm currently working on a Win98SE DAW with a projected install of~20MB. My suggestion to Maxtor is just an acedemic exersise as the work around is not that bad. I can see where the 32k option would cause you guys headaches when people become confused by the option and start e-mailing and calling Maxtor support and the. If I were you I wouldn't do it but, making a single utility disk that is designed for large media workstations would attract the intrest of potential customers. Perhaps something like "MaxMedia Maker Utility" you could even offer it as a request first download. Just a thought.

Sincerely,
Merrick
Engineer/DAW Tech
Moderator
www.prosoundreview.com


Needless to say that though there may quieter drives, I choose reliability and that's in a recording studio!