SEAGATE UNVEILS HIGHEST-CAPACITY DISC DRIVES FOR DESKTOP COMPUTING
APPLICATIONS

5,400-rpm, 2.1 and 1.6-Gbyte Fast ATA-2 disc drives raise bar for personal
computer storage

SCOTTS VALLEY, CALIF. -- May 30, 1995 -- Seagate Technology will soon be
shipping the highest-capacity ATA/IDE-interface disc drive announced in
the industry, which will offer mainstream personal computer OEMs and their
customers a combination of leading capacity and performance for desktop
systems.

The new 2.1-Gbyte Medalist 2140 and 1.6-Gbyte Medalist 1640 represent the
second generation of Seagate's premier desktop product family. They
combine the industry's largest-capacity ATA/IDE-compatible products with a
high-performance 5,400-rpm design. The drives feature average seek times
of 10 milliseconds, low 5.56-ms latencies, 16.6 Mbyte/sec Fast ATA-2
interfaces and 256-Kbyte multi-segmented caches. Packed with these
features, the new Medalist drives are designed for a wide spectrum of
data-intensive business, multimedia and entertainment applications on
today's powerful new desktop PCs.

"Seagate's depth of vertical integration has allowed us to leverage
technology from our various design centers and be first to market with a
2-Gbyte ATA/IDE drive," said Amyl Ahola, vice president of Product Line
Management at Seagate. "This product gives our OEM desktop systems
customers a drive that keeps pace with the demand for higher storage
capacity in the systems they sell."

The new drives have average sustained data transfer rates of more than 3.5
Mbytes/second, and are capable of burst data transfers of up to 16.6
Mbytes/sec. Advanced power management technology allows the drives to have
a low-idle power consumption of 3.5 watts, which allows system
manufacturers to meet the U.S. Government's Energy Star power efficiency
specifications.

Both the Medalist 2140 and the Medalist 1640 have Fast ATA-2 interfaces,
which allow for PIO (programmed input/output) Mode 4 data transfers of up
to 16.6 Mbytes/sec.Fast ATA-2 is an industry-standard interface supported
by more than 30 disc drive industry suppliers, and is compatible with
AT-standard systems. The new drives' fast throughput and high capacities
make them capable of running high quality audio/video and other
performance-dependent applications while using a low-cost ATA design. The
Medalist 2140 and 1640 drives are Seagate's third generation of Multimedia
Ready drives. Multimedia Ready drives are designated as such when they
have 850 Mbytes or more of formatted capacity, at least a 3.0 Mbyte/sec
sustained external data transfer rate and no data flow interrupts created
by thermal recalibrations or other drive functions.

The new Medalists also feature Seagate's Data Streaming technology in the
drive's controller, which reduces drive command overhead and improves
overall system performance. This improved level of performance in
AT-interface drives will become increasingly necessary as OEMs design the
majority of PCs with the class of microprocessor characterized by Intel
Corp.'s Pentium combined with local-bus system architectures. These
Medalist drives are designed to fully support and enable the fast data
transfer capabilities these systems demand.

"OEM customers are exhibiting very strong interest in the Medalist 2140 and
Medalist 1640 drives for their next round of products," said Brian
Dexheimer, director of marketing for Desktop Products at Seagate. "As the
demand for storage capacity on the desktop increases with the availability
of operating systems such as Windows 95, Seagate intends to remain the
leader as a supplier of high-capacity, high-performance ATA/IDE disc
drives."

These Medalist drives include the new industry-standard Self-Monitoring,
Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.), which is intended to allow
users to be warned of certain types of impending drive failures. System
OEMs and software suppliers can take advantage of this feature with
products designed to alert users of certain data-jeopardizing drive
conditions so that appropriate action may be taken to save the data on
their drives.

Evaluation units of the Medalist 2140 (ST32140A) and Medalist 1640
(ST31640A) are scheduled to be available in the third calendar quarter of
1995; volume production of both drives is also scheduled to begin in the
third calendar quarter of this year.

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