Winchester Technology: the removable storage leader
In the early 1970s, IBM created a new disk drive technology with greater recording density, more tracks per surface, and a faster transfer rate than the then commonly used disk units with changeable packs or modules. This new technology was called Winchester. Today, it's the technology you use every time you use your PC's hard drive.
Winchester technology first appeared in IBM's 3340 disk drive. The Winchester technology featured a low head loading force and a low mass head. Disks were lubricated so if the lightweight head should chance to touch the disk surface, it would bounce and cause no damage. (The original drives were nicknamed "Winchesters" - with reference to the 30-30 repeating rifle - because the original drive had two disks of 30 megabytes each.) The birth of a hot industry
At its birth, the Winchester disk drives (made of 14" disks) were used only for the largest storage systems in existence. Winchester was ideal for massive storage because of its unmatched data transfer and access rates, random access capabilities, reliability and durability. Manufacturers of mini- and microcomputers quickly adopted the technology for their own use. The Winchester hard drive of today is made from much smaller disks with closer recording tracks, creating higher density thus much higher capacities. It is also the inarguable standard for data storage for all computer systems. Today 3.5-inch Winchester hard drives are made with capacities as high as 23 gigabytes. All personal computers sold today are equipped with a Winchester hard drive. The average Winchester hard drive sold in consumer PCs today has a capacity of about 1.2 gigabytes.
Manufacturers dump many millions of dollars into R & D each year to develop technology that is faster and of higher capacity that the year before. Incredibly, all this R & D still goes into Winchester. The industry continues to push the limits of this 30-plus year old technology.
A new twist on Winchester technology
Realizing the potential of this powerful technology, a team of Winchester hard drive engineers added a new twist in 1983. They made it removable - creating a true "endless" hard drive. By enclosing the Winchester platter in a dust-free, contaminant-free environment (a cartridge), the fledgling SyQuest Technology invented the first removable cartridge hard drive. Graphics, Imaging and More
The first niche to discover SyQuest removable cartridge hard drives and standardize on them were graphics and color imaging professionals, working mostly on the Macintosh platform. SyQuest's removable cartridge Winchester hard drives quickly became the "pre-press interchange standard" in the publishing industry. Today, there are SyQuest removable cartridge hard drives in 98.9% of all service bureaus.
As graphics-based applications moved to the Windows environment as well, SyQuest drives became a widely-used tool for any platform. And with the arrival of the Internet, large operating systems like Windows 95, and especially multimedia, SyQuest's removable cartridge hard drives are used for more applications, on more platforms than ever before. Affordable, Portable, High-Performance Data Storage
SyQuest's brand of removable storage has long been recognized as the highest performance removable storage, simply because it's a true hard drive. Data intensive applications that must be transported benefit most from the reasonably priced, high capacity, fast, removable media provided by SyQuest's removable cartridge hard disk drives. Examples include downloaded files from on-line sources; transferring data and code sets to computers at field sites; developing, storing and playing multimedia presentations; engineering and CAD/CAM, desktop publishing, pre-press interchange, video, audio, and digital photography.
Good quality digital video recording and playback requires not only the fast access speed provided by hard drive technology, but the high sustained data transfer rates provided by a true hard drive combined with a fast input/output technology, such as SCSI. While professional grade AV hard drives are still very expensive, good quality digital audio and video for multimedia and web publishing applications can be provided by today's reasonably priced removable cartridge hard drives. SyQuest's newest drive family, the EZFlyer 230MB, for example, provides a burst data transfer rate of 4MB/sec. and a maximum sustained data transfer rate of 2.4MB, while priced at only $299 for a complete subsystem including a drive, cables, software and one cartridge. With the purchase of each additional cartridge, endless high performance storage becomes an increasingly better value. Single 230MB cartridges are 13 cents per MB with a $29.95 suggested retail price, dropping to 10.4 cents per megabyte with a ten-pack priced at $238.95. Turning Winchester hard drives into Winchester cartridge drives
Today's SyQuest removable cartridge hard drives are designed to leverage all the advances in Winchester hard disk drive technology. The same heads, motors, media, and electronics that are used for fixed hard drives are used in SyQuest's removable cartridge hard drives, leveraging the huge industry investment in R & D and manufacturing, which results in higher capacity and reliability at lower costs.
An Inside Look
Inside the Winchester cartridge, SyQuest engineers have created a virtual clean room environment. The closed inner chamber has a patented "nautilus shell" design that helps keep cartridges clean. However because the cartridges are completely removable, their inner chambers cannot be completely sealed off from the outside environment. Therefore, engineers have taken two additional steps to ensure clean and reliable operation. Once the cartridge has been inserted into the drive, a seal within the drive surrounds the cartridge to create an internal head/media "clean room" that protects it from the outside environment.
In addition, the disk is spun up to 3600 revolutions per minute prior to the entry of the heads into the cartridge, thus any particles that may have been introduced are ejected by circulating the air through a microparticle filter. The end result is a particle-free operating environment similar to the one associated with the sealed assembly of a Winchester fixed drive.
Unlike other forms of removable storage, SyQuest's Winchester drives stand up to rigorous tests in disk drive torture chambers far more rigorous than life in the real world. In one lab, drives are subjected to environments of concentrated cigarette smoke and industry-specified dust formulations. In another, heavy concentrations of talc are circulated through and around the drives and cartridges. The cartridges are rugged, not easily affected by normal heat and humidity, and highly resistant to magnetic fields.
Also consistent with methods used in today's fixed hard drives, SyQuest uses a sputtered film process to cover media disks. The sputtered-film disks are covered with a carbon overcoat that provides a surface approaching the hardness of a diamond. The media is then burnished down to 2 millionths of an inch to ensure that no data loss will occur from any inadvertent head-media contact. Power Disk Cartridge for Universal Compatibility
Power Disk Cartridge is a media standard approved February, 1996, to ensure physical and dimensional compatibility, and is based on the removable cartridge hard disk technology developed by SyQuest over the past 14 years. The PDC standard applies to single disk, 3.5-inch hard drive cartridges manufactured or marketed today by SyQuest, Nomai, Kao Infosystems, Maxell, Polaroid and Xyratex. Offering high performance and flexibility, the PDC solves the incompatibility problem of legacy storage systems, assures user investment security and guarantees users a future of compatibility beyond 540MB. Capacities of today's approved PDC cartridges include 135MB, 230MB, 270MB and 540MB.
SyQuest's EZ135, EZFlyer 230MB and SQ3270 270MB 3.5-inch drives all support the PDC standard, and the new EZFlyer 230MB can read, write and format both 135 and 230MB cartridges.
A Warning
Just this year, other makers of removable storage have ventured, for the first time, into Winchester hard drive technology. If successful in their product development, their products will join SyQuest in the upper echelon of removable storage. However, as SyQuest's engineering team knows, developing Winchester hard drive technology is a precise business, even without the added dimension of removability.
The SyQuest Edge
SyQuest holds the edge in the removable storage market because SyQuest products employ Winchester technology, the most highly advanced, competitive, widely used storage vehicle in the entire computer industry.
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Last Update: 5/30/96
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