Maxtor introduced 500 Gb drives

Maxtor started to supply market with drivex DiamondMax 11 and MaxLinepro 500. They have interface ATA133 or SATA2, 16 Mb buffer and 7200 rpm. SATA model supports hotplug (which means you can plug it into running computer) and NCQ (which is that requests are reordered to maximal eficient moves of heads). Both drives contains also technology which should remove shaking from odther drives, and so prolong life. And also something called Expanded drive self test, which should test drive for problems and report it instead of waiting for loosing all data.