Quantum is no stranger in the Hard Disk Drive arena, especially in the consumer market.  They are as well known as the other big boys like Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor and IBM.  In the Server market however, they weren't considered a premiere solution for "enterprise" class drives primarily because their drives couldn't compete with the likes of Seagate and IBM.  

That is of course until this year when Quantum unveiled its new "PC Server/Workstation" and "Enterprise Server" SCSI hard drives, the Atlas IV and Atlas 10K respectively.  The Atlas IV is Quantum's 7200 RPM U2W SCSI solution, while the Atlas 10K is Quantum's first entry into the high-end 10,000 RPM market.  In this review we will be taking a look at the Atlas 10K 18.2GB drive.

When you see the specs of this drive, you'll be blown away.  First and foremost, as we've already mentioned, it has the fastest spindle rate found in today's high end drives, 10,000 RPM's.  This drive uses the new Ultra160/m SCSI interface which doubles maximum throughput of the previous Ultra2 Wide standard.  Add to that a 5ms average access time and a 2MB buffer and you have a drive that is ready to plow through the most intensive server activity you can throw at it.  Here is a table which outlines the basic performance specs.  For a more detailed and complete spec sheet, click here.

Quantum Atlas 10K Specifications
Form Factor	3.5 inch
Interfaces	Ultra160/m, Ultra2, Ultra SCSI 68-pin Wide Ultra160/m, Ultra2, Ultra SCSI 80-pin SCA-2 Fibre Channel (dual loop) 40-pin SCA-2
Formatted Capacity	18,200 MB
Rotational Speed	10,000 RPM
Average Read Seek Time	5.0ms
Track-To-Track	0.8ms
Full Stroke	12ms
Average Rotational Latency	3.0ms
Internal Data Rate	215 to 315 Mb/s
Sustained Throughput	18 to 26 MB/s
Data Transfer Rates (Buffer- to-Host)
Ultra160/m	160 MB/s
Ultra2 SCSI	80 MB/s
Ultra SCSI	40 MB/s
Fibre Channel	100 MB/s per port
Buffer Size	2MB (4 With Fibre Channel)
Warranty	5 Years
Special Features	Data Protection System (DPS) MR (Magnetoresistive heads) PRML Read Channels Shock Protection System II (SPS II) S.M.A.R.T. Hot Swappable RAID ready

This drive is not lacking in any area.  It's has an amazing low average seek time of 5.0ms, which is amongst the lowest in the industry.  It was the first drive to support the Ultra160/m interface and along with that it also supports the Fibre Channel SCA-2 interface to provide up to 200MB/s Buffer-to-Host transfer rate.  In practical use, none of today's hard drives, including this one will be able to read and write data this fast.  The advantage of supporting these interfaces is when multiple drives are connected to the same SCSI controller.  For example, you can have fourteen Atlas 10K's connected to single Ultra160/m controller and they will all share the same 160MB/s of bandwidth.  Which means, collectively they will have a higher I/O than Ultra2 SCSI or anything else.  This is only in the most extreme cases, realistically, Fibre Channel and Ultra160/m will only make slight differences in drive performance.  What is of more importance to us is the Sustained Throughput and as you can see from the table above, it will max out at 26 MB/s.

Other unique features include Quantum's patented Data Protection System (DPS) and Shock Protection System II (SPS II).  Their Shock Protection System aims at keeping the heads as still as possible while allowing the rest of the drive to absorb the shock induced by the mishandling of the drive.  Their Data Protection System allows you to run a series of tests on the drive to verify if it is in fact the cause of system failure.  You can read more about these technologies and the others listed in the Special Features section by clicking on them.  This will take you to the appropriate White paper on Quantum's web site.

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