IBM Corp’s AdStar storage systems unit yesterday launched a pre-Comdex disk blitz, unveiling what it claims are the first 5.25 drive to store 4Gb – no, no, it’s two 3.5s packaged together – and the first 3.5 storing 2Gb. We were the first in the industry to announce and ship 1Gb 3.5 drives, and we expect to ship more than 200,000 of them this year; now we are the first to ship 2Gb 3.5 drives. Likewise, in 1993 we expect to ship record volumes of 2Gb drives, said Ray AbuZayyad, general manager of AdStar. The Models M1H and N1H 2Gb units – $2,800 each – use IBM’s second generation magneto-resistive heads with SCSI-2 fast and wide interface running at up 20M-bytes per second. The P1S version, $3,080, is claimed to be the first 3.5 available with an IPI-2 standard interface. The CSH, DSH, ESH and FSH are $4,845 4Gb units packing two 2Gb 3.5 drives in a 5.25 enclosure addressable as a single logical unit. Data striping across drives enhances throughput in high transaction environments. They transfer at 10.44M-bytes per second. They are sampling now; supply will be limited until second quarter 1993.
