SEAGATE RAISES 3.5-INCH HARD DISC PERFORMANCE/CAPACITY STANDARDS WITH THIRD GENERATION OF BARRACUDA DRIVES; New 8- and 4- and 2-Gbyte versions of Seagate's award-winning 7,200-rpm line use MR heads, PRML read channel and leading-edge interface technologies to achieve performance required for a wide range of systems and applications

Business Wire, May 30, 1995

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 30, 1995--Seagate Technology is launching a third generation of its highly-acclaimed Barracuda line of 7,200-rpm 3.5-inch disc drives with new 8-, 4- and 2-Gbyte versions that are the first among Seagate's broad spectrum of drives to combine magnetoresistive (MR) heads, partial response/maximum likelihood (PRML) read channel electronics and today's fastest system interfaces, UltraSCSI and Fibre Channel.

The Barracuda 8 and the inch-high 4- and 2-Gbyte Barracuda 4LP drives provide OEMs, VARs and distributors with a complimentary set of high-performance disc storage products for a wide range of applications. Each of the drives will be available with one of two new high-performance industry-standard interface versions: the 40 Mbyte/sec UltraSCSI or the 200 Mbyte/sec Fibre Channel-Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL) serial peripheral interface. The MR head, PRML channel and embedded-servo technologies used in the new Barracudas enable disc drive performance and storage capacities necessary for the latest breeds of engineering workstations, network system servers, mainframes and supercomputers. Typical applications in these environments include professional audio/video editing and playback, computer-aided design and manufacturing, on-line transaction processing and professional imaging.

"Seagate is recognized in the industry as being a leader in the development and delivery of data technology products that our customers demand," said Bernie Carballo, executive vice president of Sales and Marketing at Seagate. "These new drives are yet another example of how we leverage our technology and experience into products that allow us to sustain our dominance of this segment of the disc drive market."

Each of the new Barracudas feature 8-millisecond average seek times and 4.17 ms latencies (as a result of the 7,200 rpm spindle speed). The drives' PRML digital read channels support internal data rates of up to 120 Mbits/sec. All of the barracudas drives use a 512-Kbyte cache for data buffering, which can segment itself into as many as 16 partitions to provide optimal read and write performance. The combination of those performance features with industry-standard UltraSCSI and FC-AL make the new Barracudas among the fastest performers in the industry. Both interfaces are built upon Seagate's field-proven Advanced SCSI Architecture II (ASA II), a feature designed to reduce controller overhead and raise overall drive performance.

"When the award-winning Barracuda was first launched in 1993, it set the standard for high performance," said Don Colton, Seagate's vice president of Product LIne Management and Marketing. "The success of the Barracuda family has established these 7,200-rpm products as the new standard for mainstream sever and workstation applications. The Barracuda 8 and 4LP products, along with Seagate's new 5.400-rpm Hawk 2XL drives, cover the entire spectrum of performance applications."

"Performance has become an important differentiator in high-capacity drives," said Crawford del Prete, senior industry analyst at International Data Corp. "As 5,000-plus-rpm disk drives are becoming more pervasive on desktop systems, server and performance workstation platforms are moving to the 7,200-rpm performance level. Seagate is well positioned to capitalize on this market transition."

The Barracuda 8 and 4LP families of drives support hot-plug SCSI and Blind-Mate single connector (SCA-II) standards, making them ideal for RAID (redundant array of independent discs) applications. These features enable connection or disconnection of the drive to an operational array with no corruption of data or power transients, as well as easy integration into a RAID backplane by eliminating cabling complexity. SCAM Plug-n-Play Level 2 is fully supported by each of the new Barracudas, providing automatic ID configuration between the drive and the host system. This removes the need to manually configure the Barracuda in a multi-peripheral RAID environment.

The new Barracudas all have one-million-hour MTBF (mean time between failure) ratings and come with a five-year limited warranty. The drives also incorporate industry-standard Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T) as a means of anticipating drive failures, allowing system OEMs to alert users if a drive's data is in jeopardy, avoiding potential data loss.

Evaluation units of the 8.7-Gbyte ST18771 Barracuda 8 and the 4.3-Gbyte ST34371 and 2.1-Gbyte ST32171 Barracuda 4LP drives are scheduled for availability in the third calendar quarter of 1995. Production quantities are scheduled for availability in the fourth quarter.

Seagate Technology is a data technology company that provides products for storing, managing and accessing digital information on the world's computer and data communications systems. Seagate's stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "SEG."

CONTACT: SEAGATE

David Webb, 408/439-2838

Tyson Heyn, 408/439-2859