Maxtor Launches Third-Generation MaXLine Drive

(Auszug aus der Pressemitteilung)

MILPITAS, Calif., June 21 – Maxtor Corporation

(NYSE: MXO) announced today its new high-capacity, native SATA MaXLine III
hard drives. The third-generation MaXLine drives feature the industry’s first
16MB buffer and are designed to the enterprise standard of 1 million hour mean
time to failure (MTTF). With new SATA II features including native command
queuing (NCQ), capacity up to 300GB, 7200 RPM speed and Maxtor(R)
MaxCommand(TM) technology, the drives are ideally suited to provide
cost-effective storage for midline and nearline applications, such as
fixed-content storage and disk-to-disk back up.

Maxtor MaxCommand technology encompasses Maxtor’s unique firmware,
integrated SATA technology, 16MB buffer and exclusive dual processor for
intelligently and efficiently managing the drive’s workload.

“Applications that require SATA hard drives in the enterprise are growing
as corporations need to deal with a myriad of regulations that require that
data be kept longer for compliance purposes,” said Brian Garrett at the
Enterprise Storage Group. “Maxtor’s MaXLine III drives combine capacity,
performance and cost efficiency to meet the requirements of these midline
applications. The drive’s SATA II feature set with native command queuing
allows applications to do more in parallel for increased performance.”

The MaXLine III drive’s new SATA II features bring new performance and
flexibility to network storage environments. These features are an extension
of the SATA 1.0 specification and include: NCQ, staggered spin up, hot-plug
and, asynchronous signal recovery. NCQ significantly enhances the drive’s
performance, enabling multi-threaded performance and allowing the drive to
reorder and efficiently execute up to 32 commands for greater data throughput
and maximum system performance.

MaXLine III drives also feature hot-plug functionality, providing
customers using RAID or other large storage arrays with better serviceability
and flexibility when a SATA drive needs to be added or upgraded while the
system is running. Reliability improvements include staggered spin up, which
minimizes the power surge when a subsystem powers up.

“Advances in SATA technology and our manufacturing processes allow us to
provide customers with additional value in our MaXLine family of premium SATA
hard drives,” said Mike Williams, vice president of product marketing at
Maxtor. “Designed specifically for enterprise applications, Maxtor MaXLine
drives continue to be the brand of choice for midline and nearline
applications, meeting the capacity and cost requirements of our customers.”

Because SATA hard drives can be implemented in a Serial Attached SCSI
(SAS) architecture, MaXLine drives will be able to be integrated with SAS
drives in a single SAS system. This Serial in a Box(TM) storage architecture
provides flexibility and scalability in one enclosure that can serve as a
universal building block for constructing a data center’s storage
infrastructure. High-capacity MaXLine drives can be used for applications
requiring the maximum capacity at the best cost and installed together with
performance-oriented SAS drives for high transactional performance, allowing
customers to maximize their total cost of ownership.

Maxtor’s MaXLine III drives feature a three-platter design, offering
capacities of 250GB and 300GB. SATA models are currently available for
qualification testing and will begin shipping in volume next quarter.
Availability of ATA/133 models will follow. MaXLine III drives include a
three-year limited warranty.

Maxtor