IBM Announces a Record-Breaking Notebook PC Hard Drive
First Portable Storage Device Shipping to Incorporate GMR Technology
SAN JOSE, Calif (March 04, 1998) – IBM today announced the highest capacity 2.5-inch slimline hard disk drive for notebook computers. It holds 6.4-gigabytes, or about three times as much information as the average notebook hard drive contains today.
About the size of a deck of playing cards, Travelstar 6GT can hold information equivalent to a stack of 3 million double-spaced typed sheets of paper. Placed end-to-end, these sheets of paper would stretch for 522 miles or about 9,000 football fields.
Travelstar 6GT is the world’s first notebook computer hard drive to ship with a breakthrough technology called Giant Magnetoresistive (GMR) head. It also breaks the record for how much can be stored in a square inch of a hard disk drive product. The Travelstar 6GT’s ability to store more than four billion bits per square inch shatters the previous record, also held by IBM, by more than a billion bits per square inch.
A GMR head is a small but powerful hard drive component that can fit on the tip of a pencil. It allows a hard drive to read and write enormous amounts of information, meaning more data can be stored on the drive. In its research labs, IBM recently achieved a record of more than 11 billion bits per square inch with GMR.
“With the most advanced technology, Travelstar 6GT can hold more graphics, video, internet downloads and business, entertainment and educational programs than any other drive in its class. It puts a lot of facts and data at the road warriors’ fingertips, making the notebook computer a more powerful business tool,” said Bill Healy, general manager, IBM mobile hard disk drives.
Premium notebook computers users already benefit from high-capacity storage with IBM’s record-breaking 17-mm 8.1-gigabyte drive. The new slimline 12.5-mm Travelstar 6GT brings the advantages of high-capacity storage to the broadest range of notebook users. “Now the mainstream PC road warrior can have a high-capacity drive incorporating the industry’s most advanced technology,” said Bill Healy. This offering is the first of a series of Travelstar drives that will incorporate this technology.
Rigorous testing demonstrates that the Travelstar 6GT is the most rugged drive in its class*. Notebook computers are at their most vulnerable when they are turned off and being transported. If bumped or dropped, there is less of a chance that damage or data loss will occur with a more rugged disk drive such as the Travelstar 6GT.
Travelstar 6GT comes in an additional capacity of 5.4GB.
Availability
IBM’s Travelstar 6GT has started to ship in limited quantities to notebook manufacturers worldwide.
Dell Computer Corporation plans to offer the Travelstar 6GT on both its Inspiron and Latitude lines of notebook PCs during the first half of this year. IBM plans to integrate the drive into its ThinkPad notebooks and others plan to offer the drives in their systems as well.
Travelstar 6GT will be available to IBM’s distributors and resellers by the fourth quarter of 1998.
Specifications:
Two capacities — 6.4/5.4GB, 12.5mm height (.5 inches), 4.1 billion bits per square inch areal density, 3 disks, 6/5 GMR heads, ATA-4 interface, 33.3 MB/sec at Ultra DMA Mode-2, and 16.6 MB/sec at PIO Mode-4 media data rate, 4200 RPM, 7.1 ms latency, 12msec avg. seek, 512 KB buffer, 125 G operating shock, 600 G non-operating shock, 140 grams.
Travelstar 6GT features IBM’s exclusive Enhanced Adaptive Battery Life Extender 2.0 technology and Partial Response Maximum Likelihood (P.R.M.L.) digital channels. For more information about these drives call 1-800-IBM-7777. IBM’s storage Web site address is http://www.ibm.com/storage.
Source: IBM