This Conner-developed line of Seagate Medalists would be the last to feature the half-circle that was part of Conner's design language for years. This drive family would span 5 models including the Medalist 1012, 1722, 2122, 3232, and 4342, and they would be released on September 17, 1997 (the Medalist 1012 wasn't mentioned in the press release, but the manual for it has it in the same family). This drive family was a refresh to the Medalist 2120, 3230, and 4340, with its main feature update being Ultra DMA/33 support.
Some of this drive family's competition included the Quantum Fireball TM, Maxtor CrystalMax 1080, and Samsung Winner 2 (in its lower capacities).
According the the October 7, 1997 issue of PC Magazine, Dirt Cheap Drives was selling this drive for $261 ($486 in 2023 dollars).
DRIVE VITALS:
Interface: IDE
Form factor: 3.5" slimline
Capacity: 4.01GiB
Platters: 4, Heads: 8
RPM: 4,500
Cache buffer: 128KiB
Date: May 1998 (21st week)
Status: healthy
This flagship Medalist 4342 example is completely healthy with no bad or reallocated sectors.
Original Seagate Medalist 4342 video: • Seagate ST34342A hard ...
Press release: web.archive.org/web/199802011...
Download for HDmotion is at hdmotion.pingerthinger.com/
Works in DOS on Pentium or newer machines
Download containing Speedsys: www.philscomputerlab.com/dos-...
0:00 Drive startup
0:09 HDmotion run
1:56 Speedsys run
3:29 Windows XP install
51:39 Drive shutdown