The IDE Hardisk

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Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) hard disks have been around for quite a few years.  Prior to these drives, hard disks were interfaced to a PC motherboard via an extension board known as a hard disk controller.  The drive did most of the mechanical stuff and performed essential electronic/servo functions; the controller told it in detail what to do.  The development of the IDE hard moved most of the electronics and firmware (low-level software on a chip) from the controller to a printed circuit board on the drive itself.  In the process, a buffer/cache’ memory was added to the electronics to speed-up the process of reading and writing hard disk drive data.  The drive got “smarter.”  Overall costs went down and performance went up.
A much simpler board, usually identified as an IDE Controller, interfaced the IDE hard disk to the motherboard bus.  The term IDE Controller is a misnomer.  It is really nothing more than a bus interface and an interface and connector for the IDE cable going to the drive.  The actual controller is on the drive.  

SyQuest Technology, Inc.

SyQuest Technology, Inc. abbreviated as SYQT Inc was known in making removable hard disk for personal computers. Syed Iftikar started the company back in 1982. It was name in some extent to him, short for Sy’s Quest. SYQT first product were 3.9” detachable hard disk. SyQuest products aim to give personal computer users non-stop storage for data-driven applications like desktop publishing, Internet information management, multimedia, audio, video, digital photography, fast backup, data exchange, and archiving. Nonetheless, they can not capture their target market

Between 1995 and 1997 their sales have been dropping down. It was for the reason that their products have quality issue. Later in 1998 the company filed for bankruptcy.

Quantum

Quantum was founded from designers and executives Shugart Associates, IBM and Memorex. They came up with the eight inch drive. The idea of the product was to achieve very good performance without costing much on full closed servo system.

The Q500 series was the most popular of Quantum. In 1982 it had a market share of 25%. Later on Quantum was also started to develop SCSI hard drive. The product was released in 1986, it was the Q280 drive. Further developing resulted to ProDrive. A combination of Q500 series and Q280 series technology were used in prototyping it. ProDrive supports the ATA interface.

JTS Corporation

JTS corporation, which is base on San Jose, California, was a producer of IDE hard drive for personal computers. In 1994 Jugi Tandon founded JTS Corporation. The company originally concentrated in making on a new 3″ form-factor drive for laptops. The three inches feature accepted a larger drive storage capacity for laptops with their technology.

Compaq Computers was qualified JTS’s drives and incorporate it with their laptops. They became the supplier of bargain basement priced with good-performance hard drives with 5400 RPM. They produced their product in the southern part suburb of Madras City. In this case reputations on products were noticeable. Upon merging with Atari on February 1996, and getting cash from it, JTS filed for Bankruptcy by December 1998.

Disk Formatting

All magnetic hard drives are formatted in the same way, or divided into different parts known as tracks, sectors and cylinders.

The formatting method sets up a method of allocating addresses with the different fields. Formatting also make up a region for maintaining the list of addresses. The only way to know what happened with the data inside the hard disk is thru formatting. Take it for example a library. Imagine a library where your pages were tearing off from the books and scattered everywhere in the room. Getting the together the pages back to the book is almost impossible thing. The concept of formatting is to allow you to use the space while still being able to find things.

Conner Peripherals

Conner Peripherals was known in developing hard drives for personal computers. It was founded in 1986. Finis Conner, John Squires, and Terry Johnson founded the company.

Their first milestone was in 1990 where they set a record of almost 1.337 billion in sales spanning in four years. They were recognized as the fastest growing manufacturing in the United States. Also, they were first of many companies to produce IDE specified hard drives. In 1990 Seagate buy them out. Conner peripherals also started to make tape drives during 1993. In 1998, the company shut down the operation when they can not meet the low-cost demand from the suppliers.

Computer Memories Inc.

Computer Memories Inc. of CMI was started its manufacturing of hard drives during the early 1980’s. Their first office was located at Chatsworth, California. They develop economical stepper-motor drives.

During the existence they have contracted by the IBM PC/AT as sole producer of 20-Mega Byte hard disk. It was called the CM600 Series. However, it reported that delivery was a failure and the hard drives itself was found lots of shortcoming. Beside CMI was sued by Quantum for a patent infringement. CMI announce their patent-free hard drives in 1986, yet they didn’t recover from the IBM argument. Thus, announcing their exit in hard drive manufacturing business in 1986.

Compact Flash Adapter

With the introduction of the Compact Flash Adapter, anyone can now make use of a CompactFlash memory as a primary hard drive function for a computer system. As opposed to the traditional hard drive, this has no moving parts like spinning disks or wobbling bearings. This gadget provides the functionality of replacing traditional hard drives with economical and rugged CompactFlash cards that uses the same IDE motherboard interface like regular hard drives. Any system equipped with a standard 40-pin IDE connector can use this technology. This solution does not require the installation of additional hardware drivers and can be used as a primary boot device that contains the computer’s operating system.