While SCSI hard drive performance has been soaring in the past couple of years, a few companies have been on the forefront of new drive technology. Names like IBM, Quantum and Seagate are often tossed around, but seldom do you hear any mention of Fujitsu. With drives like this, however, Fujitsu is certainly making an impact on the market and is a name we will likely hear a lot more about in the coming months.

When it comes to the high-speed 10,000 RPM drives, Seagate has led the market for years, and only recently have IBM, Fujitsu, Western Digital and Quantum joined the fray. Today, we're looking at Fujitsu's latest and greatest - the MAG3182LP 18.2GIG Ultra2Wide 10,000 RPM monster.

Packaged in a sleek 1-inch high form factor, the MAG3182LP offers quite a bit of promise. With 3.6 GB per platter, the drive need only have 5 disks, and since it's using GMR (Giant Magneto Resistive) heads which can read more densely packed magnetic bits, it has a greatly reduced signal to noise ratio, making it one of the quietest drives in its speed class.

History hasn't been kind to SCSI hard drives at the consumer level. Faster speeds and bigger drives don't necessarily mean bigger sales when the prices are exorbitant. The funny thing is, people are willing to pay almost twice as much for PC133 RAM over PC100 or a Pentium 3 500 over a 450. Why then has SCSI not caught on?

Well part of the answer is infrastructure. Although some motherboards do have SCSI controllers built in, they are much more expensive, and not the norm. In fact, some of the more popular motherboards don't even have the option of built-in SCSI. So to go completely SCSI, first requires a $200 investment be made into a controller card vs. the $0 that would be needed to stay IDE. After this cost, you have to take into account that SCSI drives themselves are also more expensive.