INDUSTRY NEWS

DISKCON '98

Contamination standards meeting, cleanroom courses are on tap; 450 exhibitors expected

Fresh from approving eight standards, the disk-drive industry will continue its drive to complete the inaugural set of microcontamination protocols at a meeting set for Diskcon '98. The microcontamination committee of IDEMA, the trade group sponsoring the annual exhibition, will discuss protocols covering general outgas test procedure by dynamic headspace analysis and the use of ion chromatography to determine extractable ionic contamination on surfaces of drive components. The meeting is set for 1—4 p.m., September 21, the day before the opening of Diskcon. The show runs September 22—24 at the San Jose Convention Center.

Cartwheels: A technician pushes a cart of media cassettes at Western Digital's plant in Santa Clara, CA. Photo Courtesy Western Digital

The eight new standards cover topics such as contaminant types and sources, terminology of contaminant transport mechanisms in hard disk drives, environmental testing for corrosion resistance, and organic contamination as nonvolatile residue. The first-ever set of contamination standards, they represent the industry's response to several developments, including the advance of magnetoresistive (MR) head technology and progress to lower flying heights. The thin stripe of magnetoresistive material on MR heads is highly sensitive to magnetic flux in the disk. Any contaminant striking the stripe causes a change in resistance which to the head would resemble a significant signal change. The signal change can corrupt the data stream in MR heads (unlike in inductive heads), which can dislodge material. Meeting on the same day are the optical inspection technology workshop and the environmental health and safety committee.

Cleanroom courses scheduled for the show will cover process equipment contamination control, cleanroom operations, garments, and analytical techniques for evaluating molecular contamination. The three-day technical symposium will cover magneto-optical and holographic storage. More than 450 companies will have exhibits in more than 160,000 sq ft of space, and IDEMA expects approximately 12,000 visitors for the 12th annual show.

Disk/Trend, a market research firm, predicts a rise in worldwide shipments of rigid disk drives of 16.9% in 1998 to 152.6 million drives. That figure is expected to climb to 232.5 million drives in 2001. However, the average price per megabyte for all disk drives shipped in 1997 was less than 10 cents, and Disk/Trend predicts the 1998 average price to fall below 5 cents per megabyte. Ten years ago, the industry enjoyed an average price per megabyte of $11. According to the research firm, the squeeze on profits stems from a rate of increase in sales revenues of only 7.9% in 1998 for several major drive makers. Revenues are forecast to grow from $34.2 billion in 1998 to $38.7 billion in 2001, an average annual rate of only 4.2%, Disk/Trend points out.

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