The San Jose, California Electro-Mechanics division of Samsung Electronics Co is the latest entrant into the replacement floppy disk market, and last week previewed its Pro-FD 123Mb floppy drive. Unlike Iomega Corp’s Zip drive, the disk will be read and write-compatible with legacy 1.44Mb and 720Kb floppies. It also promises to be much cheaper than Imation Corp’s LS-120 Superdisk, which is compatible with 1.44Mb drives, but uses expensive voice coil motor control and metal in gap MIG/optical heads. Samsung’s new offering uses standard MIG heads and micro-stepping motors to keep the costs down, implementing a self-servo writing system which Samsung claims offers a cost breakthrough. Despite healthy sales, Iomega has not managed to establish the Zip drive as a floppy replacement. Neither has Imation fully established the more recently introduced LS-120, despite backing from Compaq Computer Corp and Gateway Inc, among others. The key is getting the technology bundled in with PC hardware, and the costs down low enough to make the bundling economically viable. Samsung’s drive has a one inch high form factor that can be configured for use in standard PC drives, and the Pro-FD diskettes are the same size and shape as current 3.5 inch floppies. Using the standard ATAPI interface, it can be used as a bootable a:drive. It operates at 85 times the capacity and five times the speed of traditional 1.44Mb floppies, when using 123Mb media, running twice as fast when using original floppies. Media costs should also be lower than competitive offerings, Samsung claimed. Announcements aside, Pro-FD won’t be available in production quantities until the third quarter of next year, so Iomega and Imation have a little more time to establish their competitive offerings further – not to mention Sony Corp, Mitsumi Electronics Inc, Swan Instruments Inc and Teac Corp, which all have eyes on the same market.
