San Jose-based Areal Technology Inc, the company that uses glass rather than aluminium platters in its disk drives, has come out with a 2.5 single-platter drive that packs 91.5Mb in an enclosure just 0.46 thick. The A90 weighs 3.4 oz and is designed for use in 80386- and 80486-based notebook computers running data-intensive applications. The […]
San Jose-based Areal Technology Inc, the company that uses glass rather than aluminium platters in its disk drives, has come out with a 2.5 single-platter drive that packs 91.5Mb in an enclosure just 0.46 thick. The A90 weighs 3.4 oz and is designed for use in 80386- and 80486-based notebook computers running data-intensive applications. The company reckons that glass disks are highly resistant to damage from non-operational shock while the computer is in transit – the company says the disk can withstand non-operating shocks as high as 125 Gs over an 11mS pulse – the equivalent of a drop that would break the portable’s display screen before causing any damage to the disk surface. Operational shock levels are set at 20 Gs. The company claims use of glass platters also increases the number of contact start-stop cycles a drive can endure over its lifetime, decreasing the stiction, or surface friction between head and disk, that can kill a drive. Stiction has become a major issue in the design of drives for portable computers, it says, because most automatically shut down the drive to conserve power. The A90 is priced at $365 in OEM quantities and is available in evaluation quantities now with volume production planned for the third quarter.
