This Story Posted:
July 21st, 1999

 
 

[1:10 PM]
Boing! 50 GB SCSI Drives Hit The Market
LaCie has introduced 50 GB hard drives for the Mac. The drives, cleverly called the LaCie 50GB drive, are 7,200 RPM drives and includes a Ultra2/LVD SCSI interface. According to LaCie:

LaCie, a leader in advancing the storage industry, announced today a new, low-cost 3.5" 50GB hard disk. The capacity, proven reliability and performance of the LaCie 50GB drive make it ideally suited for data-intensive applications such as digital video editing, multimedia, database and data mining, Internet/intranet, and decision support, as well as online transaction and analytical (OLTP/OLAP) applications. With a capacity of 50GB, the LaCie drive will store 90 hours of CD-quality stereo music, 25 hours of high-quality MPEG-2 video, or more than 50,000 full-color photos (640x480).

Designed to meet the performance requirements of even the most demanding applications, the LaCie 50GB drive has a maximum sustained data transfer rate of up to 19.7 MB/sec. at a rotational speed of 7200 RPM and an average seek time of only 7.4 ms. Hardware automation further reduces SCSI command overhead and cache accessing time. The drive is provided with an Ultra2/LVD SCSI interface.

For enhanced data protection, the 50GB hard disk drive uses an innovative Temperature Indicator Processor feature automatically monitors disk drive temperature and alerts the SCSI drive controller when the recommended temperature is exceeded. The 50GB drive also employs advanced error correction code (ECC) technology throughout the reading and writing process.

Available as an external unit or a module for LaCie's TX8000 RAID storage system, the high-performance drive is backed by a 5-year warranty. The drive is compatible with Macintosh, Windows 98/NT, and NetWare operating systems.

This much hard drive space does not come cheap, unless you look at the per MB cost of US$.04. LaCie has priced the new drives at US$1909 which includes Silverlining Pro 6.1. The drives are shipping now and you can find more information on the drives at the company's web site.

The Mac Observer: We have an Apple Lisa at The Mac Observer, along with the 10MB ProFile external hard drive. The industry has come a long way since then, eh?

LaCie