<A HREF="aol://4344:2564.bizmain.27787271.560705105">Business News Center
.c The Associated Press

NEW YORK (Nov. 10) - International Business Machines Corp. has managed to
develop a disk drive for personal computers with up to eight times more
storage capacity than new desktops today.

IBM said the technology will enable PC users to store the equivalent of 16
pickup trucks full of printed information. It also improves how computers run
software featuring video, picture and sound.

The hard drives could help reduce PC prices by enabling computers to store
the same amount of information more cheaply.

The Armonk, N.Y. company on Monday will announce drives with storage capacity
of up to 16.8 gigabytes. Today's least expensive PCs, $1,000 and under, now
have about 2 gigabytes of space to store data, while PCs above $2,000 hold 6
gigabytes or more.

IBM designed a new type of magnetoresistive recording head, which puts
digital data onto hard drive discs and are the size of the head of a pin. The
so-called ''Giant Magnetoresistive'' heads will be built into PCs starting
next month but won't appear in most PCs until early next year.

Hard drives are magnetic discs that store bits of digital information that
are understood, or processed, by the computer's main processing chip.

IBM uses its disk drives for PCs it makes and also sells them to other PC
makers.

 AP-NY-11-09-97 1830EST


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