At 12:32 PM 12/28/00 -0600, Adam Rifkin wrote:
>I repeat, IBM 76.8Gb ultra dma/100 hard drive at Fry's for $375...
>"home of fast, friendly courteous service! (R)"
>
>I kid you not.  That's a half a cent a Megabyte for storage.
>Not El Cheapo storage but top of the line storage.
less than two years later, we have 320 GB for the same price:
http://www.shareholder.com/maxtor/news/20020909-89588.cfm
Maxtor Driving Capacity-Centric Enterprise Apps With "Super-Sized" ATA Drives
Maxtor Continues its Leadership in the Market it Pioneered with a New
Category of High-Density ATA Drives
MILPITAS, Calif., September 9, 2002-
Maxtor Corporation (NYSE: MXO), a worldwide leader in hard disk drives and
data storage solutions, today announced Maxtor MaXLineTM, its newest
generation of ATA drives designed specifically for rapidly emerging
enterprise storage applications including near-line, media storage and
network storage. The MaXLine family features two critical differentiators:
huge capacities up to 320 GB for corporate archiving and media recording;
and unique manufacturing and quality for 24/7 operations with mean time to
failure (MTTF) rates exceeding one million hours.
The MaXLine family is designed to bring hard disk drives into "near-line"
archive applications. By adding a layer of MaXLine drives to archive
architectures, companies can instantly recover time-critical data including
executive e-mail, transaction data and accounting data that may need to be
recovered on demand.
These new drives are designed to solve another enterprise problem with the
storage of video, media and audio conference call files. Even compressed,
these files take up tremendous amounts of high-cost server space. Priced
starting around $299.95 to $399.95 MSRP, Maxtor's MaXLine family offers
high capacity drives for enterprise applications at price points between
traditional ATA and SCSI drives.
For system OEMs and white box builders, MaXLine offers high-density,
easy-to-integrate storage for use in entry-level and mid-size server
environments.
"The demand for instant recall of archived data is expanding as companies
are meeting their obligations to quickly access executive e-mails,
financial documents and transaction records," said Mike Dooley, senior
director of marketing for the Desktop Products Group at Maxtor. "Users may
not need to access information in these applications on a daily basis, but
when they do need access, it must be instant. Recent advances in ATA
technology and our manufacturing processes allow us to build upon our
legacy of experience and provide our customers with a family of premium ATA
hard drives that can be integrated into a variety of systems for these
enterprise applications."
The MaXLine family includes the 5400-RPM MaXLine II, designed for
capacities up to 320 GB and the 7200-RPM MaXLine Plus II, designed for
capacities up to 250 GB. At these capacities, MaXLine offers higher storage
density than many tape and optical solutions. These drives have also been
tested and are projected to meet enterprise reliability requirements,
already exceeded by prior drives employing the same robust Maxtor designs,
which exceed MTTF of over one million hours. These drives will also carry a
three-year warranty.
The MaXLine II and MaXLine Plus II feature the Maxtor Fast DriveTM
UltraATA/133 interface for data transfer speeds up to 133 MB per second.
The MaXLine II and MaXLine Plus II will be available with next-generation
serial ATA interface for higher performance. At 150 MB per second maximum
data transfer rate, serial ATA improves hard drive performance to keep pace
with the rapidly increasing performance requirements of data intensive
environments and enterprise applications.
With a point-to-point connection architecture, and rich command set for
managing hard drive activity and data flow along the interface, serial ATA
advances the performance and efficiency of the drive to system interface.
The interface's reduced pin count allows for simpler cabling which in turn
allows better airflow within a system and further benefits the user with
increased design flexibility and hot plug capability.
"Maxtor's MaXLine family of drives provide a solution for storing data that
has previously been too expensive to keep on disk," said Dave Reinsel,
analyst at IDC. "The ATA drives offer a great value, low cost per GB and
when integrated into storage systems and file servers offer a compelling
cost-effective alternative to tape libraries and optical drives, which have
been the traditional solutions used for near-line applications."
Availability
Limited qualification units of the parallel ATA versions of Maxtor MaXLine
II and MaXLine Plus II are now available; with volume units available in
the fourth quarter. Qualification units of the MaXLine II and MaXLine Plus
II with serial ATA will be available later this month with volume shipments
scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2003.
About Maxtor
Maxtor Corporation (www.maxtor.com) is one of the world's leading suppliers
of information storage solutions. The company has an expansive line of
storage products for desktop computers, storage systems, high-performance
servers and consumer electronics. Maxtor has a reputation as a proven
market leader built by consistently providing high-quality products and
service and support for its customers. Maxtor and its products can be found
at www.maxtor.com or by calling toll-free (800) 2-MAXTOR. Maxtor is traded
on the NYSE under the MXO symbol.
Note: Maxtor, MaXLine and the Maxtor logo are registered trademarks of
Maxtor Corporation. Fast Drive is a trademark of Maxtor Corporation. All
other trademarks are properties of their respective owners.
GB means 1 billion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on
operating environment.
This announcement relating to Maxtor may contain forward-looking statements
concerning future technology, products incorporating that technology, and
Maxtor's execution. These statements are based on current expectations and
are subject to risks and uncertainties which could materially affect the
company's results, including, but not limited to, market demand for hard
disk drives, the company's ability to execute future production ramps and
utilize manufacturing assets efficiently, pricing, competition, and the
significant uncertainty of market acceptance of new products.  These and
other risk factors are contained in documents that the company files with
the SEC, including the Form 10-K for fiscal 2001 and its recent 10-Qs.
Copyright © 2001, Maxtor Corporation ®. Privacy Policy.
--
((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))