History (1993): HP Doubles Capacity of 1.3-Inch Kittyhawk HDD

Hewlett-Packard is still the sole WW 1.3-inch Winchester disk drive manufacturer and even is one year ahead of its competitors.

It is securing its position in this segment by announcing a double capacity in the same form factor as its first Kittyhawk announced in June 92. This model now offers 42.8B of capacity in the same size (2×1.44x.4 inches) and weighs about one ounce.

The price of the new unit is almost the same: $250, OEM pricing for Q20,000 to 50,000. For this new model II, HP gives a list price of $499 for one evaluation unit, actually available, which means around $300 in OEM quantity.

HP doubled storage by increasing density on glass media and adding a fourth thin-film head (the outer side of one of the platters wasn’t used on Kittyhawk I).

Model II features 25% power savings, said HP. It uses a maximum of 2.8W at start-up on the first unit. Operating shock increases from 100 to 150G and non-operating shock from 225GG to 300G.

“40MB meets our design specs for Windows-based subnotebook computing,” said Alan Young, president and CEO, Dauphin Technology (Lombard, IL), one of the first OEM customers of the product.

Additionally, HP has worked with Microsoft to ensure that drives will be compatible with DOS 6.0 which includes data compression.

The second known computer-related OEM is EO Inc. (Mountain View, CA) for its sub-notebook computers.

When it announced its first Kittyhawk, HP saw its unit as a “Personal Storage Module” that could have other applications than in standard computers. A first market seems to be opening, cameras, to store 300 to 500 fixed digital images, as an electronic film. Sheldonberry Computer (Würzburg, Germany) and Amber Engineering (Santa Barbara, CA) are first customers for this type of application.

Model II will also be manufactured by Citizen Watch in Japan.

“We started to ship in volume,” said Jan Bell, marketing manager, disk memory division, HP. “By year end, Citizen will reach a manufacturing rate of 150,000 units per month.”

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue 64, published on May 1993.