IBM spins new drive at 15,000rpm

Gosh, that's as fast as Seagate's

By Lucy Sherriff • Get more from this author

Posted in Business, 1st February 2001 16:40 GMT

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IBM said it has built a new UltraStar hard drive for the corporate server market, designed to compete with Seagate's 15,000rpm offering. The company claims that as well as matching Seagate's speed, the new drive out performs its competition in data retrieval time.

The company is expected to announce today that the drive is now sampling. It will initially be available at 18GB and 36GB capacity points

Industry reaction has been positive. Bloomberg reports that IDC analyst Dave Reider said the arrival of a second drive running at 15,000rpm gave the speed a certain credibility. "Without a second source for these drives, there's a hesitancy in the marketplace," he said.

Bill Healy, vice president of IBM's storage division, said that the company expected high demand for the drive because people need the speed to run web sites and handle online transactions.

However, Seagate is expected to be giving its own drive a bit more oomph in the near future. Hitachi and Fujitsu are also likely to enter the market, so IBM's grace period is likely to be short. ®