X-bit labs

March 2004 Hardware News Overview (page 13)

Category: Editorial

by Andy Yaschenko

[ 03/15/2004 | 02:11 AM ]

Hard Disk and Optical Drives

Another milestone in the hard disk drive storage capacity was set by Hitachi: a 300GB model, the Ultrastar 10K300, attaches to servers across Ultra320 SCSI or FCAL interfaces intended for pumping data streams that require such storage capacities. Well, this model has only been announced; it will actually start selling in Q2.

Hitachi is also active in the opposite sector: the company is preparing a new integrated (without CompactFlash support) version of the 1” Microdrive and revealed the 1.8” Travelstar C4K40, that hit the market a year after its announcement, but anyway to the point: 20GB in the most miniature form-factor of today (there are devices smaller than 1”, but they can’t dream of such capacities yet). Considering that flash hasn’t been willing to getting cheaper lately, manufacturers of various portable device pay more attention to such products.

1U servers also feel the need for small form-factor hard disk drives, although not yet ready to get down to 1.8”, only 2.5”. In February, Seagate officially announced its Savvio family, a year after it first voiced its intention to make server HDDs of this form-factor. Now the company is ready to launch three series with different interfaces: 2GB Fiber Channel, Ultra320 SCSI and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), ranging in capacity from 36.7 to 73.4GB. In summer, the two first interfaces will become available, and SAS drives are expected to come in the fall.

We shouldn’t confuse server 2.5” HDDs with their notebook counterparts, though. The characteristics are incomparable: 10,000rpm spindle rotation speed, 1.4 million hours mean time between failures, 4.1msec access time, and the above-described interfaces. However, Seagate is not a monopolist, as Fujitsu is also willing to be in this niche, announcing 2.5” server HDDs with a capacity of up to 73.5GB and the same choice of interfaces. They don’t voice the timetable, though.

In the middle of February, 2.5” SpinPoint M40 drives from Samsung appeared in shops. These 40GB models are exactly for notebooks, with 5400rpm speed and the UltraATA/100 interface. The Koreans are going to introduce 30, 60 and 80GB representatives of the family soon.

As for the good old 3.5” hard disk drive for the PC, the market is nearly exhausted. At least, there is no sense in growing towards higher capacities.

There was some fuss in the market of CD-RW drives. The speeds remained the same – they can’t grow any higher, too, but some new models appeared: an external PlexWriter 52/24/52U for $92 and an internal DVD-CD/RW combo (52/32/52/16) from Memorex for $80. So we have the old thing, but for less money.

DVD combos are still the developing sector where there is some room towards the ceiling, although these devices have slowed down, too. Teac DV-W58D and ASUS DRW-0804P are an example as they burn DVD-R and DVD+R discs at the same 8x speed and rewrite their RW versions at the 4x speed.