Just pipped by Quantum Corp (CI No 1,454), Seagate Technology Corp has announced its own first pass at cramming more than 400Mb onto a 3.5 Winchester with the launch of the 426Mb ST1480 and the 331Mb ST1400. The drives use Seagate’s Zone Bit Recording technique and the company’s uniquely fast 4,400rpm spindle speed to achieve latency of 6.8mS. The drives have 14mS average seek times for reads and writes – Quantum claims 12mS for reads – and transfer rates go to 25M-bits-per-second. They come with either SCSI-2 or AT interface and provide AT bus transfer rates of up 8Mbytes-per-second, synchronous SCSI bus transfer rates of up to 5Mbytes-per-second. Power consumption is 11W idle, 12W seeking, and the drives have synchronised spindle capability so they can be used in arrays. Designed and manufactured at the former Imprimis plant in Oklahoma City, the new drives are built on the Control Data Wren technology. Evaluation units are already out and the SCSI versions are set for volume in the fourth quarter, AT in first quarter 1991. No prices.
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