IBM Ultrastar ES Drives Boost Performance, Reliability for High End
Desktops, Entry Workstations and LAN Servers

SAN JOSE, Calif., October 9, 1995 . . . Targeting the growing market for
high-end desktops, entry workstations, LAN servers and arrays, IBM today
announced a new family of Ultrastar ES disk drives in capacity points of 1
and 2 gigabytes. The Ultrastar ES drives have been developed for the
growing storage product market that exists between IBM's current line of
Deskstar drives for the desktop and its high-capacity, high-performance
Ultrastar 2XP drives for high-end servers and storage subsystems.

The 3.5-inch SCSI drives spin at 5400 rpm and leverage key storage
technologies developed by IBM to offer a seek time of 8.5 milliseconds,
making them ideal storage solutions for the higher performance demands of
workstation and LAN server applications. Ultrastar ES drives have an
estimated Mean Time Between Failure rating of 800,000 power-on hours (1).
The drives also include implementation of the industry-standard
Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.).

"In our newest line of leadership drives, we have combined proven IBM
technology such as Magneto-Resistive Heads, No-ID sector formatting
technology, and S.M.A.R.T. in a low-cost solution that's ideally suited
for the demanding storage requirements of the workstation and LAN server
markets," commented Bill Healy, business line manager for IBM Storage
Systems Division in San Jose, California. "The balance of performance and
capacity ensures fast access to large amounts of data, which is absolutely
critical to such applications as CAD, medical imaging, high-end database
and graphics production."

               DATA PROTECTION LEADERSHIP

IBM's Ultrastar ES drives are engineered to help safeguard investments in
LAN- and workstation-based data through implementation of the
industry-standard S.M.A.R.T. protocol. IBM's S.M.A.R.T. implementation
helps provide advance warning of impending drive failure and is an
extension of the experience the company gained in the development and use
of its Predictive Failure Analysis (PFA) technology.

The drives offer additional data protection through design elements
inherently more reliable than those of competing drive manufacturers. The
combination of MR heads and No-ID sector formatting boosts drive
performance and increases areal densities. This results in fewer platters,
heads, and other error-prone moving parts required for each drive capacity
point. IBM has also reduced the number of components required in the
Ultrastar ES. The size of the electronics card, for example, is now less
than 40 per cent of the drive's surface.

               MULTIPLE MODELS OF SCSI-2 INTERFACE

To simplify installation and configuration, Ultrastar ES drives are
SCAM-compliant for plug'n play auto-addressing on the SCSI channel. To
accommodate as many different system requirements as possible, IBM's
Ultrastar ES drives are available with a SCSI-2 interface in multiple
models: 50-pin, Fast single ended, 68-pin Fast-Wide single-ended, and
80-pin single-ended. Ultrastar ES drives are planned to support SCSI-3
Fast 20 (Ultra SCSI) in early 1996.

IBM will make its Ultrastar ES drives available to OEM customers and
through industrial and commercial distributors. Evaluation units of model
numbers DORS-31080 (1 GB) and DORS-32160 (2 GB) will be available before
the end of the year; the drives are planned to be available in volume in
the first quarter of 1996.

IBM is the world's largest supplier of computer storage products. Through
its Storage System Division, the company provides a full line of storage
solutions for OEMs, for commercial and for IBM computing systems. Its
offerings include disk drives; arrays and subsystems; magnetic tape
drives, subsystems and automated libraries; optical libraries; storage
controllers and related storage management software.

1. Information on IBM's calculation of mean time between failures (MTBF) is
available upon request.

Editors/Reporters:

IBM news releases are available on the Internet, via the IBM Home Page at
http://www.ibm.com. The IBM Fax Information Service allows you to receive
faxed copies of prior IBM product press releases. Dial 1-800-IBM-4FAX and
enter "99" at the voice menu. Information on IBM's calculation of mean
time between failures (MTBF) is also available upon request.
 
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