The first thing we notice is that ATA100 is perfectly capable of keeping up with Serial ATA, great news for anyone maintaining an older system. Simply replacing an old, worn drive with a new Ultra-ATA part indeed provides a substantial increase in both performance and capacity, even when comparing upper-end drives from a few years ago to today's more economical units.

Seagate's extra-long warranty plays an obvious trump card in declaring overall value, but that may be an insignificant factor when prolonging the usefulness of an older system for a shorter period of time. On the other hand, Maxtor's ATA133 interface gives them a huge advantage in cache transfers, but most Ultra-ATA systems will loose that advantage to their ATA100 controllers.

For buyers who find neither the five-year warranty nor ATA133 interface beneficial, could this be a tied race? The deciding factor just may be noise, as the 7200.9 is extremely quiet whereas the DiamondMax 10 is anything but. Considering everything, we'd choose Seagate's 7200.9 for upgrades and repairs of typical Ultra-ATA systems, but those coaxing along an old, noisy gaming system may choose the Maxtor for its faster cache.

Seagate 7200.9 160GB ATA100
Pros:

• Fast transfers from disk medium
• Ultra-Quiet design
• Five-Year Warranty

Cons:

• Slower Write Seeks

Maxtor DiamondMax 10 160GB ATA133
Pros:

• Fast Cache Transfers

Cons:

• Noisy

The Verdict: Maxtor makes impressive performance with its ATA133 interface, but with most Ultra-ATA systems reverting it to ATA100 speed, Seagate's low-noise design and longer warranty puts the 7200.9 in the winners circle.