SEAGATE BREAKS SOUND BARRIER WITH SOFTSONIC MOTOR; FASTEST
PC HARD DRIVE IN HISTORY IS VIRTUALLY SILENT
01//08/2001 07:50:30
Barracuda ATA IV is first with
40-Gbytes per disc and 7,200-rpm performance
SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. - 27 June
2001 - Seagate today launched the fastest PC hard drive ever, the Barracuda®
ATA IV. The kicker: a revolutionary SoftSonic™ Fluid Dynamic Bearing (FDB)
motor makes the super-fast drive the world's only virtually silent hard
drive. Barracuda ATA IV is the only desktop disc drive shipping exclusively
with FDB motors - a technology that will also enable engineers to fit more
data on a disc surface and increase hard drive spin speeds far beyond what
traditional motors allow. The drive is in volume production.
Using the most advanced data
density technology in the industry, Barracuda ATA IV is the first 7,200-rpm
disc drive to achieve 80 Gbytes using only two discs, giving Seagate a significant
advantage in the high-performance PC storage market. The drive's record-breaking
internal transfer rate - 69.3 Mbytes per second - is fast enough to copy
an hour of MP3 music in under one second. Barracuda ATA IV is fast enough
to stream eight movies simultaneously, in DVD quality, without dropping
a frame.
The SoftSonic motor is a new
feature of Seagate's sound barrier technology (SBT), and an engineering
breakthrough that computer users of all kinds can appreciate. Using industry-standard
tests, the Barracuda ATA IV one-disc model emits only 2.0 bels while spinning
and 2.4 bels while seeking; the human ear can't hear sounds below 2.5 bels.
By putting the SoftSonic motor in its fastest PC hard drive, Seagate blends
silence with speed to let consumers more fully enjoy audio/video PC entertainment,
and to help others work undisturbed by background noise. Seagate's SBT also
reduces noise using specialized seek algorithms, SeaShield® and internal
dampers, resonance reduction, spin commutation and other mechanical and
materials design optimizations.
"Seagate is ahead of the industry
with the Barracuda ATA IV disc drive, and clearly aims to be a major force
in high-performance PC storage. Seagate's SoftSonic FDB motor is a genuine
breakthrough in quiet operation," said Mark Geenen, President of TrendFocus,
the leading data storage market research firm. "Barracuda ATA IV is the
fastest ATA drive to date, which makes a solid all-around solution for performance
PCs and entry-level RAID and server applications. Its early launch could
help Seagate gain a stronger position than ever in this market."
"Silence has been a sort of
'holy grail' in PC engineering circles," noted Gunter Heine, who led Seagate's
motor engineers in creating the SoftSonic motor. "Now we've devised a breakthrough
that makes it real. We're also gratified to know our motor will enable higher
capacities and spin speeds in the future, because of its reduced vibration,
low non-repeatable runout and minimal heat output. We made the world's first
FDB motor for hard drives in 1996, and we're proud to have advanced it through
four generations of product."
The Barracuda ATA disc drive
family has earned more praise in the worldwide press than any other 7,200-rpm
drive, and has won editors' choice awards at leading technology publications
including Byte, MacWorld, PC Magazine, PC Today, Smart
Computing and ZDNet. Barracuda
ATA IV offers fast internal transfers up to 555 Mbits per second, an 8.9
msec average seek time, a large 2-Mbyte cache, and the Ultra ATA/100 interface
for burst transfer rates up to 100 Mbytes per second. The drive features
the 3D Defense System™, the industry's best disc, data and diagnostic protection,
making it the toughest and most reliable 7,200-rpm drive. Barracuda ATA
IV is the most advanced disc drive available for high-performance PCs, gaming
PCs, cost-effective network-attached storage, entry-level servers and ATA
RAID systems.
Seagate is the world's leading
provider of storage technology for Internet, business and consumer applications.
The Company's products include disc drives for the Enterprise, PCs and Consumer
Electronics, as well as Storage Area Network (SAN) solutions and Server
Appliances. Seagate's market leadership is based on delivering award-winning
products, customer support and reliability to meet the world's growing demand
for information storage. Seagate can be found around the globe and at www.seagate.com.
Seagate, Seagate Technology,
Barracuda and SeaShield are registered trademarks of Seagate Technology
LLC. SoftSonic and 3D Defense System are trademarks of Seagate Technology
LLC. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
