Testing
Unfortunately, I couldn't scrounge up a competitors drive that was similar to the DiamondMax Plus 60 in time for this review to be published. As a result I had to conduct comparison tests with older drives.

NOTE: Tests were conducted on the drive straight out of the box. I did not turn off the acoustic management or tweak it in anyway.

Test System:

Intel D815EEA Motherboard
Intel PIII 1Ghz Processor
128MB PC133 SDRAM

For testing out the performance of this drive, I threw several of the normal testing applications at it, HDTach, Sisoft Sandra, and Winbench 99.

I compared the following drives which I had available:

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 20GB 7200RPM UDMA66
Maxtor 80GB 1394 External Storage (5400RPM Drive)
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 60GB 7200RPM ULTRA ATA-100

HDTACH - This test could not be conducted on the 80GB 1394 as HDTach does not support 1394 drives

(DiamondMax Plus 60)

(20GB DiamondMax Plus)

In this comparison we see that the read speed and random access time of the DiamondMax Plus 60 were better than that of the 20GB DiamondMax Plus as well as read burst speed. The difference between the two drives read and burst speed would be due mainly on the ATA-100 support of the DiamondMax Plus 60 drive.

Sisoft Sandra

Results:
...DiamondMax Plus 60 - 24144
...80GB 1394 - 13634
...20GB DiamondMax Plus - 19795

(DiamondMax Plus 60)

(20GB DiamondMax Plus)

(80GB 1394)

From the results here we can see that overall the DiamondMax Plus 60 performed better than its competition.

Winbench 99

Results: (High End Disk Winmarks)
...DiamondMax Plus 60 - 18900
...80GB 1394 - 12700
...20GB DiamondMax Plus - 18300

(DiamondMax Plus 60)

(20GB DiamondMax Plus)

(80GB 1394)

From the results you can see that overall the DiamondMax Plus 60 performed very well. Its closest competitor was the 20GB DiamondMax Plus which was also a 7200RPM drive, unlike the Maxtor 80GB 1394. The 20GB DiamondMax Plus actually beat the DiamondMax Plus 60 on a few applications. The DiamondMax Plus 60 however pulled ahead on audio and imaging software. You can also see that the DiamondMax Plus 60's overall CPU utilization was lower than the competition. Overall the DiamondMax Plus 60 won out on the high-end DiskMark score.