Maxtor is introducing the 3Gb/s Serial ATA interface on its Maxtor MaXLine III (enterprise ATA applications) and DiamondMax 10 (desktop) hard drives. The 7,200 RPM drives will begin shipping this quarter and include capacity points up to 300GB, up to a 16MB buffer and a set of SATA II features including native command queuing (NCQ), staggered spin up, hoyt-plug capability and asynchronous signal recovery.

The new 3Gb/s SATA interface doubles the maximum data transfer speed of the original industry-standard 1.5Gb/s SATA interface.

The hard drive industry is continuing its transition from the traditional parallel ATA to the SATA interface. According to IDC, 65 percent of the worldwide desktop PC market will feature the SATA interface by the end of this year.

Maxtor hard drives with the SATA 3Gb/s interface will be available in retail later this year.