Overview - 18.2GB and 9.1GB 10,000 rpm Wide Ultra2 SCSI hard disk drives

Content

General information
IBM is expanding its offering of 68-pin cabled SCSI drives with second generation, 10,000 rpm 9.1GB(1) and 18.2GB Wide Ultra2 SCSI hard disk drives. These drives deliver a significantly higher level of rotating storage product performance(2) thanks to their innovative design and new Ultra2 SCSI interface.

Among the first drives to incorporate smaller than 3.5-inch disks in the traditional 3.5-inch form factor, these products exhibit breakthrough access times while significantly reducing power consumption and required cooling. Smaller disks have narrower data bands, require less energy to spin, and use less of the drive's physical space. This leaves more room in the drive design to accommodate a larger, more powerful actuator that, when combined with the smaller data band, results in remarkable typical average read seek times of only 5.4 ms (9.1 GB) and 6.2 ms (18.2 GB). The smaller disks also enable a design with more effective heat radiation surfaces that provide for more efficient cooling, an imperative for high reliability in such high performing drives. This allows these new drives to be used in many systems that were unable to cool the more demanding first generation 10,000 rpm drives.

The new Ultra2 SCSI interface uses improved low voltage differential signal transmission enabling longer cable lengths and faster speeds. When connecting exclusively Ultra2 devices and controllers the SCSI bus supports instantaneous data transfer rates of up to 80 MB/sec, with up to 16 components connected over a total cable length of up to 12 meters. This doubling of data rate allows connecting many more of these high throughput devices to a single controller without concern for the bus bandwidth. The new drives also support operation in current Ultra SCSI applications, running at 40 MB/sec, subject to the more restrictive Ultra SCSI cable length limitations.

These hard disk drives have the industry standard Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) feature that can provide advanced warning of an impending drive failure when used with the appropriate software, for example, IBM's Netfinity Manager. To protect customer investments in Predictive Failure Analysis server reliability software and hardware, S.M.A.R.T. implements a compatible failure reporting scheme.

(1) When referring to hard disk drive capacity MB = 1 million bytes; GB = 1000 million bytes. Actual capacities vary based on different operating environments.
(2) Actual performance varies based on many factors and is often less than the maximum possible.

The IBM 9.1GB and 18.2GB Wide Ultra2 SCSI hard disk drives provide the fastest disk storage devices available for IntelliStation or entry server systems.

Features

• 9100 MB and 18200 MB formatted capacities
• 5.4 ms (9.1GB) and 6.2 ms (18.2GB) average read seek time
• One-inch, slimline profile (9.1GB)
• Half-high (1.63 inch) profile (18.2GB)
• Single pack

• Description: 9.1GB SCSI hard disk drive
• Marketing part number: 20L0539

• Description: 18.2GB SCSI hard disk drive
• Marketing part number: 20L0540

• Announce date: August 18, 1998
• Withdrawal date: October 26, 1999

• IntelliStation M Pro 6898, 6889: All
• Netfinity 3500 8644: All(3)

• IntelliStation M Pro 6898, 6889: All

• OS/2 Warp 4.0 (4)
• Os/2 LAN Server
• SCO UNIX 5.0.4
• Novell NetWare 4.11
• Microsoft Windows 95
• Microsoft Windows 98
• Microsoft Windows NT 4.0
• Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Server

• SCSI X3.131:1986 (SCSI-1)
• SCSI X3.131:1994 (SCSI-2)
• SCSI X3.253:1995 (SCSI-3 Parallel Interface)
• T10/1142D REV 14 SPI-2 (SCSI-3 Parallel Interface Version 2)

• Under DOS, the maximum partition size is approximately 2 GB. You may have to install multiple partitions to realize the full capacity of the drive.
• Active termination must be used on the SCSI bus and the total SCSI cable length should be kept to three meters maximum (for attachment of up to four devices), or 1.5 meters (for attachment of up to eight devices). You should consider this information especially when configuring external SCSI devices.