Quantum Corp, Milpitas, California reckons it has the industry’s first implementation of write caching on 3.5 form factor drives with its WriteCache performance-enhancing feature which it claims substantially improves data throughput rates. The feature is now offered on Quantum’s high-capacity ProDrive Series products, and enables data to be transferred from the host to the buffer while simultaneously writing data to the disk, speeding data transfers. The company notes that the technique has been used successfully on streaming tape drives and larger form factor drives for a number of years, but never hitherto on 3.5 disks. The company claims sustained transfer rate increases of 50% to 200% during data writing operations have been measured with industry-standard benchmark tests such as PC-Bench. Prior to WriteCache, separate and expensive caching controllers were required to obtain the performance benefit now available as an integral part of the ProDrive line, Quantum avers.
