Systems: Storage Beat

MacWeek, March 23, 1998 by David Morgenstern

The drive offers a sustained data transfer rate of 8.7 Mbytes per second and an average seek time of 10 milliseconds, La Cie said. Additional 2-Gbyte cartridges cost $139. Phone (503) 844-4500; fax (503) 844-4508; sales@lacie.com; http://www.lacie.com.

MDI releases new RAID line. Micro Design International Inc. of Winter Park, Fla., recently released PolarBYTE RAID, its new line of high-capacity Wide Ultra SCSI-3 arrays. The hot-swappable systems use a hardware RAID controller that offers data striping and mirroring, as well as parity levels 3 and 5. The company said the arrays use a "wind tunnel" technology to keep the drive modules cool.

MDI offers two PolarBYTE configurations: a $25,499 27-Gbyte array with an 18-bay enclosure and a $33,999 54-Gbyte system housed in a nine-slot case. Each unit includes dual fans and power supplies and a temperature display. Phone (407) 677-8333 or (800) 920-3340; fax (407) 677-8365; info@mdi.com; http://www.mdi.com.

White flower disc. Ricoh Electronics Inc. of Tustin, Calif., said it expects to release later this month its Brilliant-White, a new CD-Recordable disc with an opaque, white top coat. The company said the disc's tough, coated surface will be aimed at color thermal-wax CD printers. In addition, the media can be safely written on with a permanent-ink pen. Pricing will be about $3. Phone (714) 566-3235; fax (714) 566-2683; http://www.ricohcpg.com.

Storage bits and bytes. Teaching an old interface new tricks, Quantum Corp. of Milpitas, Calif., announced an updated specification to the ATA (AT attachment) interface. The Ultra ATA/66 interface will offer transfer rates as fast as 66 Mbytes per second and can operate at half the speed with older Ultra ATA/33 controllers. Quantum said drives supporting the interface will ship in 1999. ... Quantum also extended the warranties on recently shipping models of its DLTtape digital linear tape (DLT) drives. The three-year warranty covers DLT 2000XT, DLT 4000 and DLT 7000 drives shipped since October. See http://www.quantum.com. ... AIWA Co. Ltd. of Tokyo recently reorganized its worldwide divisions, causing a ripple in its U.S. storage operation. CORE Engineering Inc. and AIWA Data Products Services Inc. (the company's development and marketing organizations, respectively) have been merged to form the AIWA RAID Technology Inc. of Boca Raton, Fla.