Quantum's Atlas II was something of a puzzle. Priced at
about $100 more than the Viking, the Atlas II is offered as the high-performance drive of
Quantum's lineup. Even so, the Atlas II posted disappointing scores, bringing up the rear
in the Business Disk Winmark and scoring second-to-last in the High-End Disk Winmark. It
trailed its own lower priced cousin, the Viking, by 10%. Drive documentation was minimal,
consisting of a leaflet describing how to set the SCSI ID of the device along with
termination procedures. Given the lower cost and higher performance of both the Viking and
the Seagate Hawk 4XL, The Quantum Atlas II cannot be recommended.
Quantum Viking QM34550VK-SW
Average Score
Business Disk WinMark 98 (KB/s)
1372
SS/Database
1216
WP
1680
Publishing
1278
Browsers
1502
Task Switching
1894
High-End Disk WinMark 98 (KB/s)
3884
AVS/Express 3.1
2410
Frontpage 97
3156
MicroStation 95
7152
Photoshop 4.0
3016
Premiere 4.2
7316
PV-Wave 6.1
2868
Visual C++ 5.0
8782
Disk/Read Random Access (ms)
13.7
Disk/Read Transfer Rate (KB/s)
Beginning
10700
End
6258
Disk/Read CPU Utilization (%)
5.8
Transfer Rate (KB/s)
10745
Positioned between the Atlas and Fireball families,
Quantum's Viking is marketed as the companies middle-of-the-line drive. In this roundup of
drives, the Viking proves to be the bargain of the group. Priced at a relatively skimpy
$381, it resides at the bottom of the price hierarchy yet provides performance that
approaches Seagate's much more expensive Barracuda XL. Although Seagate's Hawk 4XL
provides virtually the same performance, Quantum back's the Viking with a 5 year warranty
rather than the Hawk's 3 year protection. The drive operated cool, easily handled after
extended use. The only drawback was a tiny bit of noise. During operation, the Viking
seemed to create a low-pitched hum. Though noticeable, the noise was nevertheless much
easier to tune out than the Cheetah's whine. Curiously, the drive came with no
documentation whatsoever; SCSI ID and termination settings had to be retrieved from
Quantum's web page. Caveats aside, a low price combined with good performance and solid
warranty merit the selection of the Viking as Storage Review's low-priced UltraSCSI drive
recommendation.
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