Get ready for the 25-gig drive

By Staff -- Purchasing, 1/14/1999

Beginning early next year, IBM will begin shipping the Deskstar 25GP 25-gigabyte (GB) drive. The 5,400 RPM 25-GB drive is designed for the consumer or 'pleasure' PC user that wants very high capacity with good performance.

IBM will also ship the 22 GB, Deskstar 22GXP, the highest-capacity desktop PC 7,200 RPM drive. It targets video editors, engineers, scientists, and other extreme performance PC and workstation users.

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.

Both drives will also have the Ultra ATA/66, an interface that doubles the rate that the computer can exchange data with the drive.

Deskstar 25GP has the world's highest real density (3.74 billion bits) or bits per square inch of any desktop PC hard drive. Both drives feature IBM's advanced giant magnetoresistive (GMR) heads which contribute to this record.

IBM is shipping limited quantities of these drives to PC manufacturers worldwide and will ship in larger quantities in the first quarter.

Gateway, Hewlett-Packard Company, Micron Electronics, and IBM Personal Systems Group plan to integrate one or both of these drives in future PCs.