Fujitsu has leapfrogged three competitors to snatch second place in the desktop hard disk drive market after strong sales of its MPC3XXX drives, launched last October. First quarter demand for the 4.3Gb and 18.2 Gb drives saw Fujitsu overhaul Maxtone, Western digital and Quantum corporation and nestle into second place behind Seagate Technology, according to figures collated by IT analysts, International Data Corporation.
Now the Japanese hardware giant is pinning its hopes of gaining an increased share of the high-end SCSI hard disk drive market on the release of the world’s-first 36Gb product with 10,000 rpm spindle speed. The new Allegro 5 series drives will deliver the fastest-ever internal data transfer rate for servers and workstations, said Fujitsu’s European technical director, Mike Nelson. There is definite demand for this product and we’ve hit the market before anyone else, added Nelson.
Fujitsu is banking on the product’s speed to market to reel in market share with original equipment manufacturers and end-users from IBM and Seagate which together account for 80% of high end hard disk drive orders.
It is pricing the 1.6 inch-high 36.4Gb Allegra 5 drive with 10,000 rpm spindle speed drive from $1,555. The same speed on a 1 inch-high 18.2Gb drive will cost from $507 with the same specification drive with 7,200 rpm costing from $388.
The drives utilize Fujitsu’ proprietary giant magneto-resistive (GMR) heads which decodes magnetic fields on the disc into data quietly with a high level of sensitivity and consistency. GMR heads, which are also available on IBM drives, and will be shipped with Seagate drives later this year, are the enabling technology for areal densities above 5Gb per square inch. IBM gave a taste of future hard disc data storage capabilities earlier this month when it demonstrated an advanced version of its GMR read head able to read and write at realistic data rates against a drive carrying 20 Gb of data per square inch.
