3DVelocity would like to thank Fujitsu, and in particular Mike Bain of Byron PR, for their invaluable help and generosity in supplying this product for review.

First Impressions :

It has to be said the the MPG3409AH's capacity at 40.9GB is not now groundbreaking, but the fact that Fujitsu are able to hit the magical milestone of 20GB per platter on a 3.5inch format shows that they are still right up there with the best, and that their maximum 2 platter strategy is a marketing decision rather than a technological inability.

Fitting the drive was unsurprisingly straight forward, and for those who are worried about the whole idea of formatting and possibly partitioning a new drive, Fujitsu offer Ontrack Disk Manager Diskgo™ for free download from their site, which automates the whole process from start to finish.

Once up and running, the biggest surprise is just how quiet this thing is. I had to rely on the HDD Led to confirm that the drive was actually operating as I couldn't hear it over the sound of my case fans, which are relatively tame and quiet units, not the jet turbines found in some cases. In fact even when I disabled ALL my case fans I couldn't hear the drive operating, but I should point out that I have my PC on a carpeted floor, and that those who have their computers sat on the desk or on a hard surface may hear transmitted noise, though I didn't test for that.

Relying on the tried and tested method of touch, I have to say that even after an hour of heavy thrashing, the drive was cooler than a WD 5400rpm unit sat above it, and performed flawlessly on the test system we finally strapped it into.

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