Storage: Seagate Announces New 17-Gbyte Medalist Hard Storage: Drive for Higher Performance Desktop Computing - Product Announcement

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, Nov 9, 1998

Seagate Technology, Inc. Monday announced the newest addition to its award-winning Medalist line of 3.5-inch hard disc drives for desktop computers. Highly-leveraged from Seagate's Medalist and Medalist Pro platforms, the 4.3-Gbytes-per-disc Medalist 17240 combines proven technology with breakthrough performance and value-added features, reflecting Seagate's commitment to deliver best-in-class products to help people get their information when, where, and how they want it.

"People want fast, reliable access to the increasing amount of information that they depend on," said Brian Dexheimer, senior vice president of Desktop Marketing and Product Line Management. "With over 17 Gbytes of capacity combined with Seagate's renowned ease-of-integration, the Medalist 17240 offers best-in-class performance and quality. Evolving from many generations of successful technology, the Medalist's reliability benefits from the experience gained in designing and manufacturing more than 100 million Desktop disc drives."

Combining industry-leading 9-millisecond average seeks, a 512KB buffer, and an internal transfer rate up to 188 Mbits/sec, the exceptional performance of the Medalist 17240 benefits users of the most demanding applications. The drives feature Seagate's patented ID-less sector format that makes available more than 480KB (>93 percent) of the 512KB data buffer for user data, enhancing user performance. The drives transfer data at a rate of up to 33 Mbytes/second via the Ultra ATA interface. With capacity points of 17.2 Gbytes, 12.9 Gbytes, 10.2 Gbytes, 8.4 Gbytes, and 4.3 Gbytes, these drives provide the performance needed for virtual CD applications, rendering and animation, computer-based training, movies, internet caching and other entertainment and business applications.

The Medalist 17240 family also includes the latest improvements for product robustness and resistance to nonoperational shock. These include the supplemental mechanical latch leveraged from the Medalist Pro family, an improved actuator design, and other internal mechanical improvements. Its excellent acoustics follow the standard set by previous Medalist products. The Medalist 17240 specifies a Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) rating of 400,000 power-on hours, and comes with a standard, three-year limited warranty.

The Medalist 17240 also marks the expansion of Seagate's innovative SeaShield System to include new features that shield users' information from common problems. The SeaShield System now includes:

o Handling and ESD protection o Installation aids o Data integrity enhancements o Tools to reduce returns for non-disc drive related issues

"Customers have shown great interest in Seagate's SeaShield System for easy installation and industry leading reliability," said Dexheimer. "The SeaShield protective cover reduces drive failures due to mishandling, minor impact, and electrostatic discharge. It also provides a surface on the drive where installation instructions, specifications, and jumper settings are printed. In addition, Seagate established the ease-of-installation standard with DiscWizard, which PC World magazine called the 'best installation software' of any disc drive."

Medalist drives also include many data integrity enhancements as part of the SeaShield System: S.M.A.R.T. capabilities have been upgraded to level III, which can both predict and prevent problems. Seagate's Error Correction Code (E.C.C.) provides 72-bit on-the-fly hardware correction for excellent performance and 144-bit firmware correction for maximum data recovery. Improved thermal asperity recovery, continuous background defect scanning, and "Safe Sparing" combine to identify and eliminate defects with no measurable performance effects. All of these features provide excellent data reliability on the Medalist product families.

Seagate has also recently instituted a Web-based diagnostic tool to help users avoid returning a healthy disc drive for non-drive related problems such as viruses, corrupted file systems, and hardware conflicts. The diagnostic is simple to use and enables users to identify and solve some common non-disc-related system problems.

CTUs are scheduled to be available this quarter. The drives are scheduled to be in volume production in the first calendar quarter, 1999. The Medalist 17240 platform will offer the Ultra ATA/66 interface when compatible chip sets become available in volume from leading motherboard logic suppliers.

Seagate Technology, Inc. is a leading provider of technology and products enabling people to store, access, and manage information. The Company is committed to providing best-in-class products to help people get information when, where and how they want it. Seagate is the world's largest manufacturer of disc drives, magnetic discs and read-write heads, an innovator in tape drives, and a leading developer of Enterprise Information Management software. Seagate can be found around the globe and on the World Wide Web at http://www.seagate.com.