IBM Corp has announced a 25Gb hard drive aimed at low-cost PCs, along with a higher-speed 22Gb version for the corporate market. The 5,400 RPM IBM Deskstar 25G and 7,200RPM Deskstar 22GXP drives are expected to be available in PCs from Hewlett-Packard Co, Gateway Inc and Micron Electronics Inc before the Christmas holidays, but will become generally available through distributors from the first quarter of next year. The drive is roughly three times the capacity of the standard drives supplied with consumer PCs. They use IBM’s GMR giant magnetoresistive heads, and include new Drive Fitness Test technology for the automatic testing of systems software. The Deskstar 25GP holds the world record for areal density at 3.74 billion bits, according to IBM. Pricing details were not available.
