History 2000: End in Sight for Terastor

What can you surmise about a company whose Web site has become “Under Construction,” is unreachable by telephone and whose half-dozen executives, contacted by email, do not respond, other than that it has closed its doors?

TeraStor was founded in December 1995 by Jim McCoy, Gordon Knight and other highly-reputed veterans of the storage industry, yet after 4 years, has still not released a single product, after raising over $70 million in financing.

The firm’s difficulties prompt serious questions about the basic feasibility of its Near Field Recording (NFR) technology, based on a solid immersion lens (SIL), that was supposed to make possible the construction of a drive with a 20GB removable cartridge.

Confronted with the spectacular increase in the areal density of traditional Winchester HDD drives, those ventures into hybrid technologies combining magnetic and servo-optical seem to be on their last legs. Recall that Seagate acquired Quinta in 1997 for $325 million. What for? We’ve yet to see any real products from Maxoptix or Siros Technologies.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 149 on June 2000 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.