As its name implies, the flagship of IBM's latest 7200rpm line weighs in at a massive 34.2 GB of space, six gigs greater than the nearest competitor. IBM continues to leverage its ability to churn out five-platter designs to trump the competition when it comes to capacity. IBM rates the disk's seek time at 9.0 milliseconds. The familiar 2 megabyte buffer introduced with the 22GXP remains in this successor. IBM backs the Deskstar with a 3-year warranty .
Some users question the necessity of so much space.
These days, however, many enthusiasts point out that application bloat simply hasn't kept pace with hard disk capacity growth like it has in the past. Standardizing on drive size is nearly impossible. No loss of performance will occur running this drive in ATA-33 . The High-End Disk WinMark exhibits more difference, relatively speaking. Yes, a margin ten times as large as the difference in Business WinMark scores, but still hardly something one should expect to perceive.