IBM Announces the World’s Highest Capacity Desktop PC Hard Drive

100 Years of Magnetic Recording

San Jose, CA (November 11, 1998) – To mark the 100th anniversary of magnetic recording, IBM has extended the legacy of this technology today with the announcement of the world’s highest capacity hard drive for desktop PCs.
The IBM Deskstar 25GP is the latest product in the century-long evolution of inventions that owe their existence to the principles of magnetic recording. The first magnetic recording device introduced in 1898 was an early telephone answering machine called the Telegraphone, an invention of Danish scientist, Valdemar Poulsen. Since then, devices based on magnetic recording technology have had a dramatic impact* on our lives.

Several other household inventions would not exist without magnetic recording, including the tape recorder, the video cassette recorder (VCR), and of course, storage devices for computers. IBM introduced the first hard disk drive in 1956 and without this technology, the computer as we know it would probably not exist.
“Magnetic recording has had a major impact on every aspect of our lives, from the way we entertain to how we do our jobs,” said Greg Puhalla, IBM’s director of Desktop Hard Disk Drives. “The new high capacity drives we are introducing today will have a similar impact.”
That first hard disk drive in 1956 had a capacity of 5 megabytes. Now in 1998, IBM’s Deskstar 25GP 25-gigabyte (GB) drive has 5,000 times the capacity of that first drive. It holds either the double-spaced typed text on a stack of paper more than 4,000 feet high, more than six full-length feature films or 20,000 digital images.
IBM also introduced the fastest** desktop PC hard drive shipping. At 22 GB, Deskstar 22GXP is also the highest capacity desktop PC 7,200 RPM drive. It targets video editors, engineers, scientists and other extreme performance PC and workstation users. The 5,400 RPM 25 GB drive is designed more for the consumer or “pleasure” PC user that wants very high capacity with good performance. “Home or hobbyist PC users can now access the massive storage formerly available only in data centers. Professionals PC users can now use an unprecedented level of desktop storage performance to do their jobs faster and better,” said Puhalla.
Both drives are ideal for storage-intensive applications such as multimedia, video streaming, 3D graphics, digital photo albums and storing large images downloaded from the Internet or intranets.
Capacity and rotational speed are not the only factors enhancing the performance of these drives. These are among the first drives to feature Ultra ATA/66, an interface that doubles the rate which the computer can exchange data with the drive. “The leadership areal density, RPM and interface speed we have incorporated into these desktop drives makes the launch of these products a fitting way for IBM to usher in the second century of magnetic recording,” said Dr. Michael Workman, vice president of IBM Hard Disk Drive Development and Launch.
Deskstar 25GP also has the world’s highest areal density (3.74 billion bits) or bits per square inch of any desktop PC hard drive. This high areal density contributes to its high reliability and performance. Both drives feature IBM’s advanced giant magnetoresistive (GMR) heads which contribute to this record. IBM has the most experience integrating and manufacturing GMR heads, having introduced the first GMR hard drive a year ago.
These new devices are also the first desktop PC drives in the world to incorporate IBM’s new Drive Fitness Test (DFT) technology. DFT lets users easily and quickly test the health of their IBM hard drives.
Research shows that the majority of the time when hard drives are sent in for replacement because a problem is suspected, the drives are fine. DFT can reduce this unnecessary inconvenience of returning a healthy drive. It is stored in a “secret compartment” on the drive, and can be invoked even if the PC’s system software is not working properly.
IBM is shipping limited quantities of these drives to PC manufacturers worldwide. Distributor and reseller distribution is scheduled for first quarter 1999.
The top PC manufacturers including Gateway, Hewlett-Packard Company, Micron Electronics, and IBM Personal Systems Group plan to integrate one or both of these drives in future PCs.

Source: IBM

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