By Tikkler - July 30, 2000

One of the most overlooked components in a computer these days in terms of squeezing that extra bit of performance would be the hard drive. Sure, you can upgrade the CPU, motherboard and video card all you want, but all of that stuff requires software to actually run, and where do you store software? The hard drive, of course! The problem, though, is that hard drives usually are the bottleneck when it comes to loading up a program or game. If you take a look at transfer rates and processing rates of the above mentioned components, you usually run into hundreds of mega-units (as in megabytes, megapixels, etc.) per second and sometimes also into the giga-units; however, when you take a look at any modern hard drive (not including solid-state drives, of course), you usually only see 2-digit numbers in front of the unit (megabytes per second, in this case). Even though that number might look pitiful, manufactures in this market have pushed the limits of this storage medium to what seems to be its limits, but there doesn't seem to be an end in sight as of yet.

Enter Quantum, a pioneer in data storage technology and considered to be one of the leaders in the market, they have produced some of the most drooled-after products; their semi-new Fireball Plus LM line of high-performance drives are no exception. First announced in January of this year, the Fireball Plus LM (referred to as either Fireball Plus LM or Fireball LM in this article from this point forward) boasts two of Quantum's most prized reliability technologies, DPS and SPS, to, of course, increase reliability! Quantum's DPS, or Data Protection System allows users to monitor their hard drives to prevent failures before they occur and their SPS, or Shock Protection System, helps to prevent the delicate components of the hard drive from damage during the shipping, installation and handling of the drive.

The Fireball LM utilizes ultra-high densities and 7200 rotations per minute to produce a next-generation level of performance. In this review, I will show you how the Fireball LM performs against the IBM Deskstar 34GXP, a previous-generation 7200 RPM hard drive that was once considered the performance leader of the industry just a few months ago. You'll notice that I will stress the word "older" when I refer to the IBM Deskstar 34GXP as it is an older drive than the Fireball LM and is considered to be a "previous-generation" drive when compared to the Fireball LM; therefore, we cannot consider these two drives to be direct competition, but can only consider them to be comparisons of how fast a "next-generation" drive is compared to a "previous-generation" drive. I will also share with you my experiences with this drive in terms of noise and the level of heat that the drive releases, two very important considerations when purchasing a drive these days. So without furthur a due, let's bring on the specifications and the test configuration.

On to: Specifications