The Need for a Different Paradigm
Why Change?
A growing disk drive market and improvements in storage capacity fuel the increasing demand for production test equipment. Satisfying this demand using existing test solutions could burden drive producers with increased capital, people and space costs. In a business as intensely competitive as the disk drive industry, a new approach to testing disk drives is needed, one which enables drive producers to control ongoing costs and create more effective and efficient test processes for 3.5-inch form factor drives.
Traditional disk drive test processes typically have the following characteristics which all contribute to increased capital, people and space costs:
- Manual loading and unloading of drives into the test systems
- Testing at temperatures above ambient and below 65°C
- Test equipment & process lines dedicated to specific drive types
Xyratex’s XCalibre range of production test systems specifically addresses these issues by using a different paradigm for disk drive testing, providing a separately configurable and controllable environment for each individual disk drive.
This Single Cell Environment approach offers many advantages including greater test flexibility, increases in process efficiencies and more controllable production costs. A typical automated system consists of many of these cells, each independently managed and controlled by the system itself. Click here for key advantages.