History (1998): Steve Kaczeus, Leaving JTS, Forms Datazone

Steven L. Kaczeus, 63, has left JTS in order to found a start-up, DataZone, in San Jose, CA.

Whateverhe undertakes is worth paying close attention to, even if he hasn’t always been successful in the various companies where he’s worked, for example at LaPine, Kalok or JTS.

He nevertheless remains one of the industry’s most highly regarded disk drive designers, holding numerous patents. He worked for Memorex, Exxon Enterprises and Storage Technology Corp., was senior director of engineering for LaPine Technology and Seagate Technology, where he was responsible for the highly successful 20MB ST225 5.25-inch HDD. He then co-founded Kalok in early 1987 and became its president in May 1992, then COB and CTO before joining Tom Mitchell at JTS, a company in financial trouble that was formed in February 1994 by Jugi Tandon to focus on 3-inch HDDs.

In other words, Kaczeus is a man who counts in the storage industry. So what’s his latest idea for the new company he’s just founded on his own? This time, the inventor has not one but two ideas:

1- A 10,000G HDD DataZone has introduced the DataBook, an extremely hardy external HDD for travellers who need to share the same data from their desktop and laptop computers, for the purposes of backup or multimedia presentations on the road.

“In my past career working in the magnetic storage industry,” recalls Kaczeus, “I constantly encountered field return statistics for the following problems. Cause of failure was: (1) in 30% of the cases, no problem found; (2) 30% electrical component failure; (3) 30% physical mishandling (dropping, shocks, rough handling, etc); 4) miscellaneous failures. When I left JTS, I decided to design a storage product that solves item (3) on the statistical chart.“

The transportable DataBook drive, the size of a videocassette, comes in 2, 3, 4, 5 and 8GB configurations with an incredible non-operational shock of 10,000G, “which is the equivalent of dropping a disk drive from 30 inches onto a cement surface, without causing any damage to the drive,” commented Kaczeus.

“Don’t worry if you drop it or if your briefcase falls off the counter at the security check,” advises DataZone.

Even the most shock-resistant drives, 2.5-inch units do not exceed 600Gs. This exceptional durability is attained with a completely sealed contamination – free HDD external box – and not a cartridge-based device-connected via a parallel port or a PCMCIA interface. Operational shock for the DataBook is more conventional: 100G. Moreover, the unit comes with password protection and encryption backup software. It weighs 0.44lbs, measures 1.25×4.25×6.75 inches, and costs $350, $500 and $750 for 2, 4 and 6GB, respectively.

Particular care was taken to reduce the noise: 35dBA at most. A company called DataZone/Slotdrive Technologies in Woodland Hills, CA, specialized in HDD cards, already existed, with COB Dr. Derek Zupancik, but we are not aware of any connection to Kaczeus’ new company, which plans on increasing shipments of DataBooks from 2,000 in September to 5,750 in December.

The company projects capturing 1% of the WW external magnetic storage market in FY99, which translates to revenues of $38 million.

2- A small mirroring subsystem, the DataBay is a 5.25-inch form factor fault-tolerant dual-port storage system containing 2 software mirrored 2.5-inch HDD.

This dual-dock device contains 2 removable drives. If one drive fails, you replace it and all of the data is automatically regenerated. The PC user no longer needs to worry about disk failure.

This new product is still under market research study. DataZone has a main partner, Grandview Technology (Taipei, Taiwan), its principal investor and manufacturing arm, a company that currently makes CD-ROM products and LCD flat panel assemblies, and was planning to produce DVD players and LCD projectors in the near future.

DataZone’s team includes, in addition to Kaczeus, president, COB and CEO, John Everett, executive VP, WW sales and marketing, Timothy Kim, VP engineering, and the founder’s son Steven Kaczeus Jr., director, development engineering, most recently with lomega.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 127 on August 1998 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.

Note: Last position of Kaczeus was president and CTO of AUDAVI Corp., from 2002 to 2006.