IBM Announces Support for S.M.A.R.T. Disk Drive Initiative

SAN JOSE, May 17. . . IBM today announced it has joined with Compaq
Computer, Conner Peripherals, Quantum, Seagate Technology and Western
Digital in support of the S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and
Reporting Technology) initiative. S.M.A.R.T. is a reliability reporting
specification that was submitted last week to the Small Form Factor
Committee, a disk drive industry group whose endorsement would be a first
step towards approval as an ANSI standard.

S.M.A.R.T. is designed to protect user data and prevent unscheduled
computer downtime that may be caused by predictable drive degradation. It
will be incorporated into AT/IDE disk drive products from each of the
supporting disk drive manufacturers.

"Safeguarding data was our motivation for implementing Predictive Failure
Analysis technology, which we have been shipping on our SCSI disk drives,"
said Mike Cannon, vice president for product design and product management
at the IBM Storage Products Company, a unit of the Storage Systems
Division. "The S.M.A.R.T. initiative confirms that the industry also
recognizes this safeguard function is essential, even in lower-cost
systems with AT drives. With our implementation of S.M.A.R.T., we will
have the safeguard function across our product line."

The technology required to implement S.M.A.R.T. uses statistical data to
make predictions about future drive behavior. The underlying predictive
technology is expected to be implemented differently by each supplier,
consistent with the S.M.A.R.T. protocol. IBM plans to base its
implementation on its proven PFA technology to assure customers a robust
version of S.M.A.R.T.

IBM intends to incorporate the S.M.A.R.T. specification into its hard disk
drive products in late 1995. In addition, the IBM Personal Computer
Company supports the initiative and expects to release systems
incorporating the standard later this year.

"Our customers have realized the great value from our SCSI hard drive
warning function offered on our servers with NetFinity," said Bruce
Claflin, general manager, product and brand management, IBM Personal
Computer Company. "We are eager to expand the data protection feature to
other platforms. S.M.A.R.T. will enable us to deliver this same value to
our desktop and mobile system customers."

NetFinity is an IBM network management tool that allows customers to
efficiently manage complex client/server networks. It has integrated
support based on PFA technology for warning customers about impending SCSI
hard drive problems.

IBM is the world's largest supplier of computer storage products. Through
its Storage Systems Division, the company provides a full line of storage
solutions for IBM computing systems, for OEMs and for commercial and
industrial distribution. Its offerings include disk drives, arrays and
subsystems; magnetic tape drives, subsystems and automated libraries;
optical drives and libraries; storage controllers and related storage
management software.

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