Transportable vysokoemky the disk drive from Seagate

Evgenie Rudometov

Rudometov@rudometov.com

Recently known computer Seagate corporation has presented on the computer market transportable disk drive Seagate 100GB Portable External Hard Drive, created on the basis of a 2,5-inch hard disk (HDD)

Since the first computers, their productivity fast grows, technical parametres and consumer properties improve. It is a consequence of continuous evolution of semiconducting and computer processing techniques. As a result of the given evolution, and also development of architectural solutions, are perfected not only processors, but also other accessories, for example, such as hard disk drives. They carry out non-volatile saving of programs and data.

By the way, tens years ago appearance of such arrangements as a part of the architecture of personal computers (PC) academician Ershov has named pair as the most revolutionary event for branch. This type of disk drives has allowed to store fantastic quantity of bats of the information. Carrying on the family tree from the enormous arrangements presented at first by magnetic drums in size some kilobyte, and further megabajtnymi magnetic disks, these arrangements promptly decreased. Today already the few remember volume, the value in the big desktop EU disk drives. Their size made fantastic 7 Mb in the seventieth years . Having decreased in the size, they became one of the major components of the PC which size rather fast increased. It is necessary to recollect, that in the late eighties when disk drives of this type have reached sizes of 40 Mb.

However already then in technical journals experts predicted existence of the limit laying somewhere around 200 Mb. It was named as "a paramagnetic limit». This "limit" limited the sizes of the magnetic domains promptly reaching the values, when for their casual magnetic reversal enough temperature oscillations existing in arrangements. And generally speaking, foretellers of a close limit were absolutely right, but with certain stipulations: all is true for existing then ways of writing and correction of data.

Perfection of processing techniques has allowed to remove this limit essentially. As a result it was possible to create compact disk drives with very high size. Perfection of processing techniques and a construction of disk drives on hard disks was lifted by metrics of density of an information storage and dependability of operation on such height that there were a reality compact transportable arrangements of a high capacity.

One of such products, rather known computer company Seagate recently has presented. This company is the world's largest manufacturer of hard disk drives of different form factors. However, not being limited to a role of the supplier of the given components, this company has created a number of external disk drives. Among them the visible place is occupied with models Seagate Portable External Hard Drive which is hooked up to computers by means of widespread interface USB  2.0.

Key parametres Portable External Hard Drive

Arrangement Seagate Portable External Hard Drive (further — Portable External Hard Drive) is oriented to the computer market of compact transportable disk drives. Its dimensions correspond to a traditional notepad that allows to transfer easily the given arrangement, for example, in an internal pocket of a jacket.

By means of such disk drives it is possible to save great volumes of programs and the data reaching now for upper model 100 of a Gbyte (  1000 000 000 byte). It allows not only to transfer without problems from the computer on the computer files of practically non-limiting value, but also to use such arrangements as the resources expanding an information field of disk subsystems. Transportable disk drives can be shared both with servers and workstations, and with desktop and transportable computers. Last it is very important, as the built in disk drives of notebooks do not possess considerable size. Especially it concerns supercompact models of notebooks, whose dimensions are well combined with sizes Portable External Hard Drive. One of such variants is presented in a Fig. 1.

Fig. 1. Compact notebook Fujitsu-Siemens LIFEBOOK P7010 and PortableExternal Hard Drive

Really, standard disk drives for the given class of computers are arrangements in size of only 40-60 Gbytes. It is obvious, that external transportable Portable External Hard Drive, 100 Gbytes possessing in the size , can essentially expand the possibilities of a notebook linked to storage of programs and data.

Short parametres Portable External Hard Drive are resulted in Table 1.

Table 1. Short parametres of disk drive Portable External Hard Drive

Size, a Gbyte	To 100
The sizes, mm	25 h 94 h 127
Weight, g	292
The interface	USB 2.0, compatibility USB 1.1
Power supplies	Through USB
Noise level, db	23
Operating systems	Win XP/2000/ME, Mac OS 8.6, Win 98/SE

In arrangement Portable External Hard Drive the metal envelope of stylish design which provides the high dependability necessary for transportable arrangements uses.

Basis of disk drives Portable External Hard Drive are 2,5-inch HDD Seagate. Depending on models disks of different sizes use. For topovoj the model which are now high in bar Portable External Hard Drive, it is applied HDD ST9100823A. Short parametres of it HDD are resulted in Table 2.

Table 2. Short parametres HDDST9100823A

Size, a Gbyte	100
The sizes, mm	9,5 h 70 h 100
Weight, g	102
The interface	Ultra ATA/100
Power supplies, In	+5 (±5 %)
Speed of rotation of disks, rpm	5400
Quantity of disks/heads, sht	2/4
Internal transfer rate, Mbit	386
Average access time, a msec	12,5
The built in cache memory, Mb	8
Noise level, db	24
Guarantee, years	5

Realised in Portable External Hard Drive hardware-software resources of interface USB 2.0 do not demand installation of additional drivers. The given resources are compatible to all widespread operating systems and provide a data transfer high speed: speed limit of the interface — to 60 Mb per second.

Arrangement Portable External Hard Drive easily and was defined at once by WindowsXP operating system after its hooking up to the transportable computer. The menu fragment testifies to it «the Manager of arrangements», resulted on a Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. A menu fragment «the Manager of arrangements» after hooking up to disk drive Portable External Hard Drive notebook

Real parametres of transportable disk drive Portable External Hard Drive can be defined in the course of testing, as it has been made. Results of the given testing are presented more low.

Testing Portable External Hard Drive

As a computer platform for testing of transportable disk drive Seagate 100GB Portable External Hard Drive in size of 100 Gbytes compact notebook Fujitsu-Siemens LIFEBOOK P7010 used. Into its structure enter:

·         Motherboard FUJITSUFJNB189 (the processor bus of 400 MHz, Intel chip set 855GME with the built in graphics subsystem and ICH4-M),

·         Intel of Pentium M ULV 733 (1.10 GHz, 2048 Kbytes of cache memory L2, clock rate of the processor bus of 100 MHz that provides data transfer with frequency of 400 MHz),

·         the Disk drive on hard 2,5-inch magnetic disks HDD FUJITSU MHT2060AT in size of 60 Gbytes,

·         Units of dynamic storage DDR333 SDRAM of 512 Mb,

·         the Videoadapter presented by resources of the built in drawing of a chip set of Intel 855GME,

·         Optical drive MATSHITA UJDA755 DVD/CDRW,

·         the Operating system of Microsoft Windows XP HomeEdition.

After hooking up Portable External Hard Drive to a notebook in a window «My computer» appears a new logical disk. By means of a choice of appropriate options it is possible to output on the display screen of value of information capacity. In a Fig. 3 and Fig. 4 are presented menu fragments «My computer» and "Properties".

Fig. 3. A menu fragment «My computer» after hooking up to disk drive Portable External Hard Drive notebook

Fig. 4. A fragment of the menu of "Property"

And now some digits characterising high-speed parametres and received in the course of testing Portable External Hard Drive by means of package SiSoftwareSandra. The received results are presented in a Fig. 5.

Fig. 5. High-speed parametres Portable External Hard Drive

As follows from results of the testing, the given model of disk drive Portable External Hard Drive in size of 100 Gbytes, possesses not only high size, but also shows high speed regulation characteristics. It means, that the given arrangement can be used successfully as a carrying over and information storage effective remedy.

Transportable disk drive Seagate 100GB Portable External Hard Drive has been given by company EASTSIDEConsulting, notebook Fujitsu-Siemens LIFEBOOKP7010 — the Moscow representation of company Fujitsu-Siemens