Storage Dimensions, Inc., was an American computer company active from 1985 to 1998 and based in

Milpitas, California Milpitas (Spanish for or little cornfields) is a city in Santa Clara County, California, part of Silicon Valley and the broader San Francisco Bay Area. Located on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay, it is bordered by San Jose, California, S ...

. The company sold

data storage Data storage is the recording (storing) of information (data) in a storage medium. Handwriting, phonographic recording, magnetic tape, and optical discs are all examples of storage media. Biological molecules such as RNA and DNA are con ...

hardware—chiefly magnetic-tape- and hard-drive-based storage subsystems (with the hardware manufactured by other companies)—and developed server software for businesses. The company was perhaps best known for their SpeedStor

disk utility A disk utility is a utility software, utility program that allows a user to perform various functions on a computer disk, such as disk partitioning and logical volume management, as well as multiple smaller tasks such as changing drive letters an ...

software for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

and

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. From 1987 to 1992, the company was a subsidiary of

Maxtor Maxtor Corporation was an American computer hard disk drive manufacturer. Founded in 1982, it was the third largest hard disk drive manufacturer in the world before being purchased by Seagate Technology, Seagate in 2006. It was revived as a bra ...

History

Storage Dimensions was founded by David A. Eeg and Gene E. Bowles in

Los Gatos, California Los Gatos (; ; ) is an List of municipalities in California, incorporated town in Santa Clara County, California, United States. The population is 33,529 according to the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. It is located in the San Franc ...

, in 1985. Both Eeg and Bowles had worked for

Atasi Corporation Atasi Corporation was an American -inch hard disk drive manufacturer company founded in California in 1981. Atasi began selling products the following year in 1982 and was one of the first -inch hard disk drive manufacturers to develop and uti ...

, a San Jose–based maker of 5.25-inch hard disk drives that was acquired by Tandon in 1987. After leaving Atasi, the two founded Storage Dimensions with their own savings. The company's first product was the AT160F, a hard disk drive subsystem for the

IBM Personal Computer AT The IBM Personal Computer AT (model 5170, abbreviated as IBM AT or PC/AT) was released in 1984 as the fourth model in the IBM Personal Computer line, following the IBM PC/XT and its IBM Portable PC variant. It was designed around the Intel 80 ...

and compatibles that comprised one or two 160-MB HDDs manufactured by

, a controller card with

BIOS In computing, BIOS (, ; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is a type of firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization d ...

written by

Award Software Award Software International Inc. was a BIOS manufacturer founded in 1983 by Rene Vishney and Bob Stillman in San Jose, California. In 1984, the company moved its international headquarters to Los Gatos, California, United States. History In 1 ...

, and the company's SpeedStor disk utility software. It cost US$9,795 on its introduction in November 1986 for the two-HDD, 320-MB model, or $5,975 for the one-HDD, 160-MB model. The AT160F was one of the largest HDD subsystems available for the IBM PC at the time, allowing these computers to install graphics-heavy applications such as

CAD/CAM CAD/CAM refers to the integration of computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM). Both of these require powerful computers. ''CAD'' software helps designers and draftsmen; ''CAM'' "reduces manpower costs" in the manufacturi ...

and illustration software packages which were previously the domain of expensive

minicomputer A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a type of general-purpose computer mostly developed from the mid-1960s, built significantly smaller and sold at a much lower price than mainframe computers . By 21st century-standards however, a mini is ...

s and

Unix workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or computational science, scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating syste ...

s. Storage Dimensions continued to consult Maxtor for succeeding products, and in June 1987, Maxtor acquired Storage Dimensions outright, for an undisclosed sum. Following the buyout, Maxtor moved the company's headquarters to

. Maxtor folded U.S. Design Corporation, a company they had acquired earlier in the year, into Storage Dimensions while retaining the latter name for this division. By the end of 1987, Storage Dimensions had generated $18 million on sales of their high-performance, high-capacity HDD subsystems. In the summer of 1988, they introduced the SpeedStor AT650E, which was the highest-capacity 5.25-inch disk drive for the IBM PC up to that point in time, with a storage capacity of 651 MB. The company simultaneously released the LANStor LAN650E, a version of the SpeedStor AT650E optimized for

file server In computing, a file server (or fileserver) is a computer attached to a network that provides a location for shared disk access, i.e. storage of computer files (such as text, image, sound, video) that can be accessed by workstations within a co ...

s running

Novell Novell, Inc. () was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as NetWare. Novell technolog ...

NetWare NetWare is a discontinued computer network operating system developed by Novell, Inc. It initially used cooperative multitasking to run various services on a personal computer, using the IPX network protocol. The final update release was ver ...

network operating system. By 1992, Storage Dimensions had grown to $80 million in sales under the auspices of Maxtor. That year, Maxtor spun off Storage Dimensions into an independent company, after which the company began focusing on

RAID RAID (; redundant array of inexpensive disks or redundant array of independent disks) is a data storage virtualization technology that combines multiple physical Computer data storage, data storage components into one or more logical units for th ...

storage systems, tape backup products, and network storage management software and other server software. In April 1998, Storage Dimensions merged with Artecon, Inc., a Unix systems integrator founded in 1984 and based in San Diego, adopting the name of the latter company.

References

External links

* {{webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/19961205044745/http://www.storagedimensions.com/, title=Official website, date=December 5, 1996 1985 establishments in California 1987 mergers and acquisitions 1998 mergers and acquisitions 1998 disestablishments in California American companies established in 1985 American companies disestablished in 1998 Computer companies established in 1985 Computer companies disestablished in 1998 Computer storage companies Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer companies based in California Defunct computer hardware companies Tape-based computer storage