Seagate Technology Inc is claiming a first with its latest disk drives, the 9.1Gbyte ST19101 and 4.55Gb ST34501 Cheetah family of 3.5 inch drives. They are the first to use a rotational speed of 10,000 revolutions-per-minute, compared with the more usual 7,200 rpm. With the higher spindle speed, internal formatted data transfer rates of 15 Mbytes/second are achieved, says Seagate – a 40% boost from slower models – along with a reduction of the average latency times to under 3 msec, and reduced seek times through embedded servo technology. The speed will make the new disk suitable for performance hungry applications such as transaction processing and digital video. High-speed interfaces such as UltraSCSI and Fiber Channel-Arbitrated Loop are supported. Seagate boasts that it was also first with 5,400 rpm (Elite) and 7,200 rpm (Barracuda) product lines. Evaluation units should be ready in the first quarter of next year, with production quantities by the second quarter. No prices.
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