Peerless system satisfies demand

By MICHAEL FOREMAN

Iomega has launched its Peerless storage system that is capable of storing up to 20 gigabytes (Gb) of data on a removable disk cartridge.

Iomega Asia Pacific managing director James Payne said the Peerless drive would satisfy a rising demand for high-capacity PC disk storage, which had been caused by applications such as digital video.

The Peerless cartridges have been developed from IBM Travelstar notebook drives, and will initially be offered in 10 or 20Gb versions, but Iomega will introduce larger capacity cartridges as IBM develops higher capacity drives.



The Peerless system consists of a cradle to hold the cartridges and an interchangeable base unit that contains the PC interface. The drives will be offered with either a USB (Universal Serial Bus) or Firewire (IEEE 1394) interface, but users will be able to buy other interfaces as accessories in future.

Australia New Zealand country manager Peter Dawson said the USB interface had been provided for convenience of attachment rather than speed as it ran at around 1.1 Mb/second, but the Firewire interface would deliver a transfer rate of 15 Mb/second provided a suitable card had been installed on the PC.

Whichever interface is chosen, the drives cost $1149 including GST with a 10Gb cartridge or $1299 including GST with a 20Gb cartridge. Extra cartridges of 10Gb and 20Gb capacity respectively cost $449 and $599, both including GST.

Mr Payne said Iomega would now focus on products with large capacities in line with demand.

In the United States, where the Peerless drives have been available since May, 80 per cent of customers were already opting for the 20Gb cartridges.

Iomega has also launched a networked attached storage (NAS) product called DataSafe, which costs $10,395 including GST in its 160Gb version and $14,850 including GST for 360Gb of storage.

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