Photo: Red Hill.
Seagate Medalist 425xe
Another good Seagate drive, and very comon for quite a while, though a bit sluggish. We sold quite a few new and went on trading them for some years afterwards.
The Medalist 425xe was overshadowed by the outstanding Medalist 545xe, which looked almost identical and came out only a little later.
Illustration: A Medalist 425xe (top) together with a Medalist 17240 of 1999. In the five years between these two drives, capacity went from 420MB to 17GB (17,000MB), performance from 0.63 to 1.19, and the price halved.
| Performance | 0.63 | Reliability | AA2 |
| Data rate | 32 Mbit/sec | Spin rate | 3811 RPM |
| Seek time | 15ms | Buffer | 120k |
| Platter capacity | 214MB | Interface | IDE mode 3 |
| Actuator | voice coil | Form | 3½" 1/3 height> |
| ST3491A | 428.1MB | 4 thin-film heads | ** |