The DiamondMax Plus 9 leaves the rest of the field behind in two of the benchmark disciplines in particular, namely application performance and the minimal data transfer rate when reading and writing. In practical terms, this makes it ideally suited for all types of sequential data retrieval/ storage, such as video editing, due to the high minimal transfer rates. It also means that you can work on your computer with no delays resulting from today's high performance applications (WinBench 99 2.0).

Reaching well over 100 MB/s, even the burst transfer rate attains a new all-time best for individual hard drives. Until now, achieving such a maximum bandwidth required at least two hard drives in one RAID system.

The DiamondMax Plus 9 also achieves a rating in the top third with regard to CPU load and access time measurement.

This good set of results is marred, however, by the excessively short warranty period of just one year (even though two-year warranty periods have been obligatory in the EU since 2002). Ultimately, someone has to vouch for this warranty, and in many cases, this is the dealer.

Particularly with a product for which reliability and/ or data security count more than anything else, short warranty periods do not necessarily inspire confidence.