Quantum Corp will start volume shipments of the Fireball lct successor, its Fireball CX hard drives in September, confident that it has cracked the price performance equation needed to succeed in the emerging sub-$700 PC sector. Quantum has engineered the Fireball lct to address 4Gb from a single giant magneto resistive head, enabling it to offer a single platter capacity of 8.4GB, compared to the 6.4GB or 4.3GB normally available to single head drives. Despite this cost-cutting enhancement, the company claims it has still managed to improve overall performance by between 5% and 8%, driving seek times down from 95 milliseconds to 8.9 milliseconds, for example.
