IBM provides a comforting three-year warranty with the Deskstar 120GXP. Toll-free telephone support is available Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. CT but not on weekends--bad news for wage slaves upgrading a home computer. IBM's excellent online support includes jumper diagrams, FAQs, manuals, and software downloads.
Tie it up
The 120GXP is an excellent performer, with the best seek time of the three drives we tested in this roundup. You'll prefer the Western Digital WD1200JB's faster sustained throughput if you work with a lot of audio and video, but for everyday computing, the IBM's just as good a choice.
eTesting Labs' WinBench 99 2.0 test Measured in kilobytes per second; longer bars indicate better performance
Disk-transfer rate: end
Disk-transfer rate: beginning
Western Digital WD1200JB
28,800
48,900
IBM Deskstar 120GXP
24,000
47,900
Maxtor D540X
36,600
20,200
HD Tach 2.70 tests Measured in megabytes per second; longer bars indicate better performance
Write speed (maximum)
Read speed (maximum)
Read burst speed
IBM Deskstar 120GXP
30.2
49.6
87.6
Western Digital WD1200JB
29.6
50.3
86.1
Maxtor D540X
22.9
37.6
100
CNET Labs' tests evaluate the range of performance you may expect from a hard drive. The eTesting Labs' transfer rates are measured at the beginning of the disk (or its outside, where data moves past the read head at a higher rate) and at the end of the disk (or its inside, where data moves past the read head at a slower rate). HD Tach performs similar tests, returning a drive's maximum sustained write and read speeds. In addition, it measures read-burst speed, which
evaluates the performace of the drive's read-ahead memory and the drive controller.
The IBM Deskstar 120GXP tied with the Western Digital drive on many tests, but the IBM's 12.2ms seek time--faster than the Maxtor's or the Western Digital's--makes it especially well suited for dealing with large groups of small files or concurrent playback of multiple audio and video files. The Maxtor outperformed the IBM only when it came to read burst speed.
