History (1988): Siemens Megafile Model 5800

Announced at the 87 Comdex/ Fall’, Megafile Model 5800 from Siemens is a 5.25-inch HDD with a 777MB unformatted capacity.

The first evaluation units should be available the end of 1988.

Siemens has given following preliminary specifications of the product:

• Capacity per drive (MB): 777 unformatted, 677 formatted
• Per surface (MB): 51.8 unformatted, 45.1 formatted
• Per track (bytes): 31,740 unformatted, 27,648 formatted
• Per data sector: 512
• Data sectors/track: 54
• NRZ transfer rate: 15Mb/s

Positioning time

• Track to track: 2ms
• Average: 16ms
• Maximum: 45ms
• Latency time: 8.3ms
• Functional specifications
• Rotational speed: 3,600rpm
• Cylinders: 1,632
• Data heads: 15
• Servo heads: 1
• Disks: 8
• Interface: SCDI/ESDI

Reliability specifications

• MTBF: 30,000 POH
• PM: not required
• MTTR: less 15 ms
• Soft read errors rate bits: 1 per 10¹⁰
• Hard read errors rate bits: 1 per 10¹²
• Seek errors rate: 1 per 10⁶ seek

Physical specifications

• Form factor: 5.25-inch
• Weight: 3.6kg
• DC voltage requirements: 12V, 16A – 5V, 20A

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠1, volume ≠1, published on February 1988.