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Technology Stocks : Seagate Technology -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: roger held who wrote (3929)	10/26/1997 9:26:00 PM
From: DJBEINO	Respond to of 7841

Computers Made Plain Upgrading Hard Drive Need Not Be Hard Investors Business Daily, Friday, October 24, 1997 at 12:50 Does your hard-disk drive have you feeling claustrophobic? It could be time to upgrade to something with more breathing room. These days, hard drives fill up fast. Everything from office software to multimedia games is getting bigger and vying for space. And then there's the Internet. Surfing the Web and downloading files is a sure-fire way to run out of room. Last year, filling up the space on an average new disk drive took about a year, says Diana Braun, worldwide retail marketing manager at Western Digital Corp., a drive maker in Irvine, Calif. This year, that's down to about nine months, she says. But there is good news. Upgrading your hard drive is relatively cheap and easy. First, answer a few questions. When is your current drive truly full? Do you want to replace your current drive or add a second one? How big should your new drive be? And some users might pause at the prospect of opening their PC. They worry about losing data or damaging components. Fortunately, computer stores are happy to help. Sales of after-market disk drives are booming. These are drives other than those included with new computers. International Data Corp. of Framingham, Mass., expects after-market drive shipments of 39 million in the U.S. this year. That's up from 25 million last year. By 2001, almost as many after-market drives will be sold as drives with new PCs, says IDC analyst Crawford DelPrete. The largest drive makers are Seagate Technology Inc. of Scotts Valley, Calif.; Quantum Corp. of Milpitas, Calif.; Western Digital; Maxtor Corp., a Milpitas, Calif.-based unit of Korea's Hyundai Electronics Industries Co.; Japan's Fujitsu Ltd.; and International Business Machines Corp. Here's the process experts say you should follow in expanding your PC's storage: * Determine how much space is left on your hard drive. Get rid of software you don't need. The uninstaller feature of Windows 95 lets you quickly scrap programs. A defragmentation utility also can provide more space on your drive by neatly reorganizing your data. If you decide you need a new drive, it's time to go shopping. * First, consider whether a removable-storage device might better fit your needs. Roy, Utah-based Iomega Corp.'s Jaz drive and Fremont, Calif.based SyQuest Technology Inc.'s SyJet drive are alternatives to hard drives. They use cartridges that hold one to two gigabytes each. The Jaz and SyJet give you more flexibility. Just buy another cartridge when you need more room. There are drawbacks, however. They're pricey. The latest version of Jaz, which should be available later this quarter, will cost about $650 for an external model. A three-pack of two-gigabyte cartridges sells for $149. Performance - measured by how quickly the device accesses data - also is lower with removable storage. * If you do decide to get a new hard-disk drive, get more space than you think you'll need. Look for drives with at least two or three gigabytes. Prices start at less than $200 for a two-gigabyte drive. * Decide whether you want to ditch your old drive. If you have enough bays to store both drives, you could use your old drive as a place to store files. If it's ancient, though, it's probably not worth it. * Do the installation yourself, or get an expert to do it. Consumers are installing more drives. Braun estimates that 90% of customers that buy Western Digital's hard-drive kit do the upgrade themselves. "The physical installation can be scary," admitted Denise Lippert, a Seagate product marketing manager. But manufacturers have tried to simplify the job with easy, concise directions. If you do the upgrade, follow instructions closely. And be sure to back up your data beforehand. After the drive is installed, run the software that came with it. This should walk you through the formatting of your drive. With a newer PC, there shouldn't be any compatibility problems. If you're upgrading an older model, you may need some help. Look for the installation process to get easier in the future. The industry is developing technology that would allow users to easily move components into and out of a computer. When it's perfected, upgrading a drive will be akin to "stuffing a video into your VCR," said Roger Reich, technical marketing manager at Maxtor. "You'll never have to open up your PC again." In the meantime, plenty of technicians are willing to help, usually for a fee. Most computer stores have staff that can do the upgrade for you. They'll replace your old drive, transfer the data and make sure everything works properly. The average installation cost is about $40 to $50.

To: roger held who wrote (3929)	10/26/1997 10:02:00 PM
From: Gus	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 7841

Hey Roger, That's really interesting. The Medalist Pro 9.1 GB, which I understand is going to be priced between $500-550 and available in volume in December, is also significant in several other respects: 1) First 7200 rpm desktop disk drive. Everybody else is at 5400 rpm and below. There's a 40% performance gap between the 10,000 rpm Cheetahs and the gaggle of 7,200 rpm disk drives, and there's a 33% performance gap between the 7200 rpm Medalist Desk Pro and the rest of the field. Performance defined in terms of average access times and sustainted transfer rates. 2) First disk drive to use the motors with the fluid bearings. As I have detailed in my previous posts, everybody is going to need this to go beyond 10,000 rpm. SEG is going to transition all their disk drives to this platform over 3 1/2 years. Even if the virtually integrated players increase R&D to catch up in design, they are still handicapped by the fact that only SEG has developed the supply line (internal, Sanyo, Seiko, Taylor-something) to supply the motors. I believe it was Bill Fischofer who pointed out the potential bottlenecks in computer system design. For example, Intel is planning to use RMBS's memory bandwidth architecture to open up a 1.6 Gigabyte/second pipe between Merced (due 1999) and the DRAM subsystem possibly eliminating the secondary cache (SRAM) that the system designers have been using to buffer the increasingly faster processor and the slower DRAMs. In order to reduce the latency in the overall memory scheme, the disk drive makers will have to increase the speed of their disk drives primarily by increasing areal density AND increasing spindle speed. What I see happening is that SEG will continue to crank out the volume in the sub-$1,000 PC category, which is the fastest growing segment of the consumer PC market (coming soon: sub-$1,000 notebooks and sub-$1,000 enterprise PCs), primarily by extending the useful life of their TFI heads and trailing-edge MR heads. Although SEG doesn't have the most advanced TFI heads, I believe it is still the largest and most efficient manufacturer of TFI heads with yields somewhere north of 85%. In 1996, SEG accounted for a little over 50% of the total global production of TFI heads. I'm guessing that with the developing overcapacity in disk drive assembly and heads, along with the current glut in platters (newest player: Dow Chemicals specializing in media optimized for 10,000 rpm and above, est. 1998 capacity: 250K/month, 1999 capacity: 1.0 M/month), there are going to be some interesting changes to SEG's manufacturing transitions. It's too bad that SEG decided not to release their September quarter balance sheet or limited the access to the CC because those would have given us a better sense of their plans. Everything I have read suggests to me that SEG's assault on the mid to high-end of the desktop disk drive segment will intensify in the March quarter. That should be an interesting market with computer PC makers having a wider range of choices (12 GB Bigfoots $400, 7200 rpm Medalist Pros-$500-550, etc). SEG's enterprise drives should also benefit from the higher density MR heads and should firm up SEG's margins. If the resulting performance boosts are significant enough, this may allow SEG to recapture some market share. Interesting next few months ahead. Terastor and Quinta announcements are scheduled before the end of the year as well as SEG's 4.0 GB/in2 GMR program. Keep your ears to the ground, folks. Gus