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RAID Disk Array Features 18.2-Gbyte, Ultra-SCSI, 3.5" Drives

WOBURN, MA (March 26, 1998) Winchester Systems Inc. announced new high capacity models of their FlashDisk® RAID disk array products that feature new 18.2-Gbyte Ultra-SCSI disk drives.

The FlashDisk RAID family includes workgroup, departmental and enterprise models. A typical workgroup model offers 145.6 Gbytes using eight 18.2 -Gbyte disk drives in a pedestal enclosure. Typical departmental models offer up to 200.2 Gbytes in a pedestal array using up to 11 drives. Enterprise systems offer both eight and 11 drive rackmount enclosures with 145.6 Gbytes and 200.2 Gbytes per unit. Up to 10 rackmount enclosures are housed in a data center cabinet with a maximum of 80 drives per cabinet and total storage of 1.456 Tbytes.

The 18.2 Gbytes drives are packaged in the company's new “hot-swap” drive carriers that are now equipped for Ultra-SCSI drives with 68-pin SCA connectors that support the new, high speed 40 Mbytes per second data transfer rate. Unique to FlashDisk RAID, optional ultra-high reliability 18.2 Gbytes drive carriers feature front panel thumbscrews to fasten the drive carriers to the chassis. These fasteners reduce vibration and increase heat dissipation. This increases reliability by reducing disk retries due to vibration and by keeping disk drives cool. The FlashDisk RAID array also supports Ultra-SCSI host interfaces, both single-ended and differential, that deliver up to 40 Mbytes per second sustained host data transfer rate.

The 40 Mbytes per second host data transfer rate makes FlashDisk ideal for throughput oriented applications that transfer large quantities of sequential information such as “page and swap” files for multitasking operating systems, web servers, multi-media, imaging, data warehousing, hierarchical storage management, backup and other applications with large file exchanges. FlashDisk is also ideal for transaction-oriented applications including database, OLTP, MRP and other disk intensive applications.

FlashDisk offers up to two Ultra-SCSI host ports that deliver a total of up to 40 Mbytes per second of sustained data throughput and a maximum possible rate of up to 80 Mbytes per second. The two ports can be connected to a single host for increased throughput or multi-hosted to two hosts to increase fault tolerance or to share the array hardware. Multiple hosts can access separate data, using similar or differing file systems, or actually share data under operating systems that support clustering such as Digital UNIX & OpenVMS, HP-UX, IBM AIX and SUN Solaris. FlashDisk SCSI is also available for Intel Pentium and Pentium PRO servers plus SGI, MAC, Pentium and Pentium PRO power workstations.

Complete FlashDisk RAID systems start at $19,856 for the workgroup pedestal unit with a single Ultra-SCSI host port and two 18.2-Gbyte, Fast-SCSI disk drives totaling 36.4 Gbytes of storage. The 145.6 Gbytes workgroup pedestal unit with two Ultra-SCSI host ports and eight 18.2-Gbyte disk drives is $37,826 or 26 cents per megabyte. A 200.2-Gbyte workgroup pedestal unit with twelve 18.2-Gbyte drives is $50,355 or 25 cents per Mbyte. Delivery is two to four weeks.

About Winchester Systems Inc.

Winchester Systems Inc. is a manufacturer of high performance peripherals for demanding industrial, government and commercial applications. For more information, contact Winchester Systems Inc., 400 West Cummings Park, Woburn, MA 01801, USA. Toll free: 800-325-3700, international: 781-933-8500, FAX: 781-933-6174. Fax-on-demand hotline: 800-4WINSYS (800-494-6797), e-mail address: info@winsys.com, web site: http://www.winsys.com.

Winchester Systems, FlashDisk and OpenRAID are trademarks or registered trademarks of Winchester Systems All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such.

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