History (1990): Record Into 3.5-Inch HDD by Maxtor

For several years, Maxtor Corp. (San Jose, CA) was always the first one to announce the highest capacities in 3.5 or 5.25-inch HDDs and even in some optical disks.

In the 3.5-inch form factor, they are many companies that have exceeded the 340MB of the LXT-340 (see following table below).

Today the Californian company is leaving everyone behind with 537MB.

It now only has to prove that the availability dates announced will be correct, which has not always been true.

In one year, the maximum capacity of 3.5-inch HDDs has almost doubled, and we know it will still grow.

Maxtor is already talking about its future LXT-xxx, one in technology development, the other one in technology concept stage, with higher capacities and that, compared with the LXT-535, will have the following differences: still 6 platters but 12 heads instead of 11, a density exceeding 1,600tpi, a 24Mb/s disk transfer rate instead of 21Mb/s, and a rotation speed higher than 3,600rpm.

Maxtor has already scheduled to offer evaluation units of this model in June 1991 and to start production in 3Q91.

IBM is already working on 640MB in the same 3.5-inch form factor.

Let’s come back to the 535MB LXT-535, industry’s actual highest capacity 3.5-inch HDD. It can be depopulated to 437MB and is available with either SCSI or AT interface. The MTBF is 150,000 hours.

Maxtor insists on the fact that these 2 new devices are platform compatible with the rest of the LXT family (200, 213,340).

“If customers have already qualified the LXT for high capacity 3.5-inch HDDs 200, they need only perform a limited qualification for other model members of the LXT family because of commonality of hardware and firmware,” said the company.

Maxtor is already shipping the new models to beta sites and said it will begin shipping evaluation quantities in November; volume deliveries will begin in early 1991.

OEM volume pricing for the LXT-535 is $1,450 and $1,250 for the LXT-437.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠33, published on October 1990.