Seagate Brings Full PC Computing Power to Mobile Computing Market
SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. — January 26, 1994 — Seagate Technology (NASDAQ/NMS:SGAT) Wednesday announced the addition of three more high capacity models to its industry leading, ruggedized 12.5 millimeter-high 2.5-inch product line.
The ultra-low profile ST9300 family of products includes the ST9300AG, the ST9240AG, and the ST9150AG featuring formatted capacities of 262-, 210-, and 131 Megabytes (Mbytes) respectively.
The new product family extends the company's 2.5-inch line of products designed to bring full PC computing power to the rapidly growing class of ultra-thin, light weight notebooks, subnotebooks, hand-held and pen-based computers.
In addition, the ST9300 family provides a feature-rich transition path for customers presently using the ST9235AG (210 Mbytes) and ST9145AG (127 Mbytes) models which have gained wide OEM acceptance.
The new ST9300 family showcase Seagate's latest technology achievements in this products class with industry leading performance in storage capacity, power efficiency, and ruggedness. The new disc drive models provide up to 21% lower power dissipation when compared with competing 2.5-inch products. Seagate's industry leading power efficient designs are resulting in extended system battery life.
Recent tests by PC Magazine indicated that Seagate-equipped color notebook systems provided a battery life of 49 minutes longer on average than systems containing competitive disc drives. In addition, the drives offer unprecedented levels of operating shock tolerance with Seagate's SafeRite shock sensing system.
SafeRite allows these Seagate products to withstand operating shock of up to 100Gs — 10 times that of any competitive product — significantly increasing data reliability in mobile environments when compared with conventional technology.
"High capacity, high operating shock resistance and low power dissipation are the three critical demands of leading manufacturers of mobile computing products," said Amyl Ahola, Seagate's vice president of Marketing.
"These products meet and in many cases exceed mobile system requirements by bringing desktop PC storage capacity, SafeRite shock sensing technology, and industry leading power efficient designs to ultra-low profile 2.5-inch disc drives."
The ST9300 family features a 16 millisecond average seek time and a 120 Kilobyte multi-segmented adaptive cache. These mobile data storage products also incorporate Seagate's advanced power management features and a highly integrated, proprietary ASIC design, which result in extremely energy efficient products that consume less than 0.65 watts at idle.
Additionally, the ST9300 products support the latest Fast ATA interface features of Programmed I/O (PIO) Mode 3 and Direct Memory Access (DMA) Mode 1. This allows PIO burst data transfer rates up to 11.1 Megabytes per second, and DMA burst data transfer rates up to 13.3 Megabytes per second, features critical for today's high performance portable computing systems.
"Seagate has maintained a leading market share by developing and introducing products that enable the market to transition to more advanced system platforms," stated independent market research firm International Data Corp. "In 1994 we expect the mobile market to grow by 20%, with subnotebooks emerging as a critical component.
"By investing in follow-on offerings to its successful 170 Megabyte, ST9190AG product, Seagate is positioning itself to capture the significant revenue potential of this high growth market." Currently Seagate's 2.5-inch drives are designed into mobile computing systems manufactured by many major OEMs including AST, Compaq, Gateway 2000, NEC, Olivetti, Texas Instruments and Zenith Data Systems.
The ST9300 products feature Mean-Time-Between-Failure ratings of 300,000 hours. The ST9240AG and ST9300AG offer a standard two year warranty.
The ST9300 family of products will be demonstrated during a special customer briefing in Taiwan on Jan. 27. Evaluation units of the ST9300 family are available now. Production quantities are currently scheduled to be available the first calendar quarter of 1994. OEM single-unit evaluation quantities are currently priced at $500 for the ST9300AG, $350 for the ST9240AG, and $295 for the ST9150AG.
Seagate Technology is a leading independent designer, manufacturer and marketer of data storage products and components for the computer systems and data technology industries.
Note to Editors: All trademarks are property of their respective owners.
CONTACT:
Seagate Technology, Scotts Valley
Julie A. Still, 408/439-2276 or
Tim Sutton, 408/439-2880