IBM Announces New Blazing Fast, Reliable Server Hard Drives
Ultrastar 36ZX Holds 30 Movies of TV Quality
SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 11, 1999--IBM today announced two new high-performance, extremely reliable 10,000 RPM hard drive models, the 36-gigabyte (GB) Ultrastar 36ZX, and the Ultrastar18LZX, available in 18 and 9 GB capacities.
Ultrastar 18LZX has the fastest seek time (4.9 msec) of any hard drive. Seek time is how fast users can find information stored on their hard drives.
''With these new Ultrastar drives, IBM has once again mastered the art of high performance while improving reliability with several new features and technologies,'' said M.S. Bhat, IBM Server Hard Drive business line manager.
Ultrastar 18LZX can hold more than 15 symphonies in high-fidelity sound. Ultrastar 36ZX holds the equivalent of 1,188 feet of shelved books or more than 30 movies of TV quality.
Both drives are designed for use with applications that use crisp and clear audio, high-definition and life-like video, colorful graphics and animation, and enormous databases. These drives are ideal for supporting large intranets and Internet applications, as well as digital video editing, CAD/CAM, on-line banking and credit card transaction processing, digital documentation and document imaging, and data mining.
Ultrastar 36ZX and 18LZX are the world's first server hard drives to use glass disk platters and load/unload technology for higher reliability and performance. Load/unload parks the recording heads off of the disk platters when not in use. In addition to wear reduction, parking the heads off the disks can reduce power usage substantially when in standby mode. Both technologies have been exploited in IBM's leading notebook computer hard drives successfully for several years.
With the new Ultrastar products, IBM is using a new technology called Cache Optimizer for the first time. This reduces the drives' access times, leading to a dramatic increase in performance. The new drives have large buffers of up to 8 MB that also contributes to their high performance, especially for large data transfers and other sequential operations.
The new Ultrastar 36ZX and 18LZX are IBM's first 10,000 RPM hard drives incorporating giant magnetoresistive (GMR) head technology. IBM has the most experience manufacturing GMR head technology and was the first company to introduce drives with GMR heads in 1997.
The new Ultrastar 36ZX and 18LZX drives also take advantage of IBM's storage chip technology.
IBM's hard drives for desktop, server and notebook PCs, servers, digital cameras and hand-held appliances won more than 20 major awards worldwide in 1998.
The Ultrastar 36ZX and 18LZX are in qualification now by several OEMs and distributors and will ship in volume next month. For more information about IBM hard drives go to ibm.com or call 1-888-426-5214.
Specifications
- Ultrastar 18LZX 10,000 RPM, two capacities: 18.3 GB/ 9.1 GB, 3.0 ms average latency, 4.9 ms average read seek time, 186.4 to 354.4 Mbits/sec media data rate (banded), 3.5 billion bits per square inch areal density, 10/5 GMR heads, 5/3 glass substrate disk platters, interfaces: Ultra2 SCSI, Ultra160 SCSI, SSA, Fibre-Channel Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL).
- Ultrastar 36ZX 10,000 RPM, 36.7 GB, 3.0 ms average latency, 5.4 ms average read seek time, 186.4 to 354.4 Mbits/sec media data rate (banded), 3.5 billion bits per square inch areal density, 20 GMR heads, 10 disk platters with glass substrates, interfaces: Ultra2 SCSI, Ultra160 SCSI, SSA, Fibre-Channel Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL).
Both drives also incorporate power save and standby modes and Drive Temperature Indicator Processor technology (Drive-TIP). Combined, these technologies help increase reliability, decrease power usage, and monitor the temperature of the drive.
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Contact:
IBM
Michelle McIntyre, 408/256-7589
mc@us.ibm.com
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