By James E. Powell

Despite its ample formatted capacity of 2.5GB, Quantum's Bigfoot makes modest demands on your PC's interior space. While many hard disks seem to require bays specifically designed to accommodate their dimensions, the Bigfoot slips into a standard 5.25-inch bay.

The drive provides high-speed data transfer through a Fast ATA-2 interface. It uses a 128KB buffer and supports local-bus AT Programmed Input/Output (PIO) Mode 4 and Multiword DMA Mode 2 data transfers at speeds up to 16.6MB per second. Quantum's AutoTransfer technology minimizes drive-to-host overhead delays, and with its automatic 160-bit double-burst, on-the-fly error detection and correction, data is transferred reliably.

The drive's firmware has Multiple AutoRead and Multiple AutoWrite to allow multiple sector transfers for a given data request. Its Look-Ahead DisCache further reduces the time it takes to get data off the disk.

I installed the Bigfoot as a "slave" drive and had to contend with CMOS settings not described in the user guide. After determining the proper CMOS setting, I set a jumper on the drive and connected the drive's cables.

The drive's performance was very good. Quantum rates the two-platter 2.5GB drive with a 15.5-millisecond average seek time and 30ms in a full-stroke seek test. I partitioned the disk as a 1.5GB drive and a 1.0GB drive, then copied a folder with 216MB of data in 88 files from one partition to the other. It took an average of 4 minutes 25 seconds to copy the files.

Quantum's Bigfoot 2.5 is ideal for adding a lot of storage in a little space.

--Info File--
Quantum Bigfoot 2.5
Price: $300; 1.2GB model, $200
Pros: Performance; mounts in 5.25-inch bay
Cons: Installation documentation
Platforms: Windows 95, 3.1x, NT
Quantum Corp.
800-624-5545, 408-894-4000
WinMag Box Score: 3.0