Manufacturer: IBM Tech: 9.1Gb 7200RPM Ultra-Wide SCSI HD Bundle: N/A Price: $500

When consumers think about the various products and technologies that IBM develops and manufactures, speedy hard drives usually aren't the first item that springs to their minds. IBM is working hard to change this however, by developing and implementing new techniques and enhancements to make their hard drives equal to, or even slightly better than the best drives on the market.

The IBM hard drive we're taking a look at today is one of IBM's mid to high end Ultra-Wide SCSI options, the "Ultrastar 9ES". The Ultrastar line is IBM's answer for "Servers and Workstations" yet you'll soon see that the 9ES is more than capable of blowing away your desktop needs.

Sporting a 7200rpm spindle speed, and Ultra-Wide SCSI support, the Ultrastar 9ES matches up well with most of the premier hard drives available from any current vendor.

Here's a look at the black and white on the drive:

Size: Interface: Formatted Capacity: Head Type: Data Buffer: Spindle Speed: Transfer Rate: Max Sustained Data Rate: Seek Time:

3.5" Ultra-Wide SCSI (40MB/sec.) 9.1GB Magnetoresistive Extended (MRX) 512Kb 7200RPM 171 Mbits/sec. 13.3 MB/sec. 7.5ms

Surely the above reads as a proper resume for any high-end UW-SCSI drive, particularly the low seek time of 7.5ms and the quick 7200rpm spindle speed.