10/06, 3:50pm
Company active on toxins, groups say
Two environmental advocacy groups have praised Apple in a joint report, newly distributed to the media. ChemSec and Clean Production Action claim that Apple is one of the more respectable companies in eliminating bromine and chlorine from its products, through an "innovative program that restricts the use of nearly all bromine and chlorine compounds across all their product lines," the groups say. A number of smaller Apple products -- including iPods and iPhones -- are now free from any PVC or BFRs (brominated flame retardants), and its computers are said to be mostly free of PVC, and entirely free of BFRs.
more
09/22, 9:35am
Seagate Cheetah, Savvio SED ship
Seagate this morning promised a new level of security for work-oriented hard drives by shipping its first Self-Encrypted Drives (SED). The Cheetah 15K.7, Constellation, Savvio 10K.3 and Savvio 15K.2 all automatically protect data that isn't immediately being used. They all have an encryption engine that processes information on the fly but without slowing down the drives' actual speed.
more
09/21, 7:35am
Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB
Seagate today updated the Barracuda line to include the industry's first drive to use an 6Gbps SATA interface. The 2TB Barracuda XT has twice as much theoretical bandwidth as existing SATA II drives and gives the disk up to 600MBps in burst transfers. In actual speed, the drive is still fast with a 140MBps sustained transfer rate and is helped by Seagate's first use of 64MB of onboard cache for a mainstream drive.
more
09/17, 2:45am
Simple NAS shares with Facebook, Twitter, MySpace
CloudEngines has announced that its network device for USB storage, the Pogoplug, now connects directly with social networking portals. The company's service will also be available for customers purchasing Seagate's latest FreeAgent DockStar device. MacNN has taken a closer look at the original Pogoplug, including its simple configuration and the new social networking functionality. The full review is available here.
more
09/16, 9:55am
Seagate DockStar and 1TB Go drive
Seagate pushed its external drive technology today by launching its first cradle for network-attached storage as well as capacity boosts for its more portable 2.5-inch external drives. The DockStar cradles a FreeAgent Go drive and links it over Ethernet to share its storage with the local network It's moreover one of the first third-party devices to have Pogoplug support and lets users download files from anywhere through a web browser.
more
09/15, 8:55am
Seagate updates FreeAgent media hub
Seagate today spun an important update to its FreeAgent networked media players. The FreeAgent Theater+ HD increases the maximum resolution for video to 1080p and adds support for DTS audio on top of Dolby Digital. Additionally, it now becomes networkable through an Ethernet jack that lets it stream content from other computers on the local network.
more
08/19, 4:35pm
Fujitsu Celsius Ultra PC
Fujitsu's Celsius Ultra gaming PC, which is claimed to be the fastest air-cooled gaming system around, has been priced and images have been captured, as it has been tested by an independent source. The 3.33GHz Intel Core i7-powered system sports dual EVGA GeForce GTX 295 graphics cards set up in a 4-way SLI configuration on a single board. Each card has 1.8GB of dedicated RMA. The cards' cooling capabilities haven't been modified, though their speeds have been slightly increased. There is also 12GB of RAM onboard.
more
08/07, 10:40am
TDK 2 5TB Hard Drive Plans
Advances in TDK's hard drive technology could lead to another large boost in the capacity of hard drives within a few months, a roadmap presented this week shows. The storage firm is currently going through qualification tests of 640GB drive platters that would fit into a typical 3.5-inch drive and so would allow significantly more storage than existing 2TB drives from Hitachi, Seagate and Western Digital. A premium but commonplace four-platter drive could hold just over 2.5TB of data.
more
06/24, 10:05am
Seagate FreeAgent Mac 2009
Seagate today swept through its external hard drive line with a series of upgrades for just the Mac versions of its disks. Highlighting the launches is the FreeAgent Go Pro for Mac: the storage is one of the few wholly portable 2.5-inch external drives to include a FireWire 800 interface and also supports both FireWire 400 and USB. Every drive also spins at 7,200RPM and behaves more like a 3.5-inch drive in spite of its size. 250GB, 320GB and 500GB models ship this month at prices of $130, $150 and $190 respectively.
more
06/22, 12:00pm
BlackArmor line expands
Seagate today introduced three new units to its BlackArmor line of external data storage. The additions involve the BlackArmor NAS 220 Storage Server, the BlackArmor WS110 External Drive Workstation, and the BlackArmor PS 110 Portable Drive. All of the BlackArmor units include a bare metal recovery feature and automated full-system backup. SafetyDrill software, used to restore system data if something were to happen to the original data, is also included.
more
06/19, 2:05pm
640GB FreeAgent Go Slips
Seagate today inadvertently spoiled its plans by posting a product page for a 640GB FreeAgent Go. The drive would represent one of the first 2.5-inch external drives to break the 500GB ceiling; differences aren't evident except for in color, where the 640GB disk will only come in black or silver instead of the several colors available with the smaller capacities.
more
05/05, 6:00pm
DealNN: 250GB FreeAgent Go
Today's featured DealNN deal is on the Seagate FreeAgent Go 250GB portable external hard drive from Amazon.com. It is regularly priced at $100, but has been reduced to $59.99 for today only. Get 250GB of portable storage space for photos, music, videos, documents and more. This hard drive is backed by a five year limited warranty from Seagate.
more
04/27, 2:40pm
Seagate Replica
Seagate started its week today by launching a device which comes closest to replicating the behavior of Apple's Time Machine backup for Windows PCs. The Replica performs an automatic, continuous backup of an entire Windows system and lets users either restore all their third-party apps and documents after a crash or else return individual files that might have been deleted or lost. The drive maker promises a simple process where the drive will auto-install and configure itself over USB.
more
04/22, 9:25am
Seagate Barracuda LP
Seagate on Wednesday seized on the eco-friendly trend with the launch of its Barracuda LP (Low Power) hard drives. The disks have the same capacities as regular desktop drives, up to 2TB, but throttle the rotation speed back from 7,200RPM to 5,900RPM. This and other optimizations help cut the active power use by as much as half versus regular drives. The company also aggressively claims that the LP series uses about 25 percent less power than competing hard drives.
more
04/08, 6:10pm
DealNN: bargain hard drive
Today's deals at DealNN include a wide range of storage devices. Amazon.com's Gold Box deal of the day for today features the Seagate Barracuda 1TB SATA bulk hard drive priced at $79.99. That's a price drop of $100 off the original price and it includes FREE shipping. Make it an external hard drive with the Startech InfoSafe USB SATA HDD enclosure priced at $31.24 with FREE shipping at Buy.com.
more
03/30, 11:10am
WD Buys SiliconSystems
Western Digital this morning grabbed an edge against rival Seagate by acquiring flash storage maker SiliconSystems for $65 million. The deal takes effect almost immediately and will set the new division towards producing solid-state drives (SSDs) for its parent. No immediate product plans have been announced, but SiliconSystems currently makes SSDs for notebook-friendly 2.5-inch sizes and smaller, including 1.8-inch and memory card-sized drives.
more
03/24, 11:55pm
Seagate BlackArmor
Seagate on Tuesday kicked off the launch of a new network-attached storage line in the form of the BlackArmor 400 series. The array is built to provide automated backup over RAID for home and small offices that might not necessarily have the resources to support a professional system, even with as many as 50 users. It uses simple drive cradles to hold as much as 8TB of storage in four bays, sports a built-in status LCD and lets users access the array's contents over the web without compromising the network's core security.
more
03/09, 9:50am
Seagate shows 6GBps HDD
Seagate on Monday at the Everything Channel Xchange Conference in New Orleans has shown off a hard drive with a SATA 3 interface that allows it to transfer files at burst speeds up to 6 gigabits per second, or a real-world 600 megabytes per second. This is double the theoretical maximum of 3Gbps of the current SATA 2 interface and quadruple that of SATA drives, which peak at 1.5Gbps. The drive, developed in partnership with chipmaker AMD, will be backwards compatible with the existing SATA and SATA 2 interfaces, using the same cables.
more
02/26, 5:15pm
Seagate drops Stec suit
Hard drive and flash-based memory maker Seagate announced on Thursday that is has dropped its patent suit against competitor Stec and that Stec has likewise dropped its countersuit, Forbes reports. Seagate said in a statement that pursuing the matter is no longer cost-efficient and the recent poor economic conditions have slowed Stec's sales of the technology that was being disputed in the lawsuit.
more
02/03, 5:30pm
Seagate intros 2TB HDD
Hard drive manufacture Seagate has introduced its first 2TB hard drive on Tuesday, which is part of the 3.5-inch, 7,200RPM Constellation ES family that also includes versions with 1TB and 500GB capacities. At the same time, Seagate has announced the release of two 2.5-inch, 7,200RPM Constellation drives with the lowest power consumption in their class and 500GB and 160GB capacities. All five drives in both new lines are meant for enterprise applications, working under heavy workloads in business servers.
more
01/28, 3:50pm
Barracuda Mac fix details
Seagate has outlined specific instructions for Mac users to remedy firmware problems with certain Barracuda 7200.11, ES.2 SATA, or DiamondMax 22 hard drives. The issue can cause the drive to lock on certain systems, leaving the stored data inaccessible. Upgraded firmware can only be installed on Intel Macs, such as the Mac Pro and iMac. The 2.5-inch notebook drives are not affected, ruling out the need to install firmware on the MacBook, MacBook Pro or Mac Mini.
more
01/22, 7:25pm
Seagate drive firmware fix
Seagate has released a firmware revision that addresses continued issues with certain Barracuda and DiamondMax hard drives that have failed for a large number of customers. The problems began with reports of a bug that caused the drives to lock during normal boot procedures. The company on January 16th released firmware that was intended to address the problem, but apparently caused compatibility issues for some users. Seagate claims that any affected drives will still retain the written data despite the temporary inaccessibility.
more
01/14, 3:25pm
Toshiba Fujitsu HDD Talks
Toshiba on Wednesday revealed (reg. required) that talks are currently underway to investigate buying Fujitsu's hard drive business in a deal estimated to be worth roughly $448.8 million. No details have been revealed, but Fujitsu itself has acknowledged the talks and says that Toshiba is one of "several" candidates for a possible deal, which in the past have also included Western Digital.
more
01/13, 5:00pm
Seagate Barracuda Failures
A chronic firmware problem is triggering failures in Seagate's current-generation Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives, according to owners in the company's forums, NewEgg buyers and elsewhere. The disk series, particularly the 1TB model, reportedly suffers from a bug triggered on boot that incorrectly locks up the drive as a protective measure and prevents the system from recognizing the storage from then onwards. The problem appears tied to firmware from drives issued in Thailand but isn't exclusive to models from those factories.
more
01/13, 1:05pm
New Seagate Cheetah drives
Storage builder Seagate has announced two new hard drives, the Cheetah 15K.7 and NS.2. The drives are intended explicitly for enterprise storage, but come in the more conventional 3.5-inch format instead of the 2.5-inch size used by many corporations. The 15K.7 is claimed to be the fastest 3.5-inch enterprise drive, rated at 15,000rpm with a seek time of 3.4ms. The drive can also be connectied through 6Gbps SAS 2.0 or 4Gbps Fibre Channel interfaces.
more
01/05, 9:05am
Seagate Barracuda 7200 12
Seagate today preempted CES by launching a major update to its Barracuda drives. The 7200.12 is the first desktop hard drive to fit 500GB of data on to a single platter and manages to hold 1TB by using just two platters versus as many as four on other disks. Condensing the data improves reliability by reducing the points of failure and also improves performance through sheer density. Seagate itself estimates sustained transfer speeds of 160MB per second and thus competes more closely with some solid-state drives.
more
12/16, 11:50am
V Low Cost Netbook HDDs
Hard drive manufacturers are in the midst of developing 2.5-inch hard drives inexpensive enough to easily be used with netbooks and other budget notebooks, say unnamed storagy industry contacts. Hitachi, Seagate and Western Digital at a minimum are all said to be developing drives that would cost between 40 and 50 percent less than many existing netbook drives, which cost up to $45 and take up a disproportionately large percentage of the final cost of systems that themselves often cost approximately $400.
more
12/05, 2:00pm
Belkin pulls out of MW09
Yet more companies are planning to withdraw or scale back their efforts for Macworld 2009, reports say. Accessory maker Belkin has already confirmed plans to pull out of the expo, joining Adobe, the creator of Mac-centric programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator. Belkin explains its move as unrelated to financial worries or the economy, and instead a decision to shift presentation money towards private product announcements.
more
11/19, 1:20pm
Seagate adds colors to Go
Portable and internal hard drive maker Seagate on Wednesday announced the upcoming release of its FreeAgent Go drives in a wide range of colors. In addition to the previously available red, blue, black and silver FreeAgent Go drives, the new color options include two kinds of green, a lighter blue, pink, orange and gold. Each drive from the FreeAgent Go range originally launched in September will come with a bonus multimedia package when owners register them between November 28th and New Year's day.
more
11/11, 9:20am
Fujitsu intros green HDDs
Fujitsu on Tuesday announced the upcoming release of its 2.5-inch MJA2 BH- and MJA2 CH-series hard disk drives, both 5400RPM, SATA units with 500GB of capacity. The MJA2 CH drives sport AES hardware-based full disk encryption (FDE) with a 256-bit key size. This hardware-based encryption offers greater security than software-based protection, as the user password is not obtainable when the drives are powered off.
more
11/10, 4:00pm
Seagate, McAfee intro HDDs
Seagate on Monday announced it has teamed up with virus-protection software developer McAfee to develop its self-encrypting notebook PC hard drives from its Momentus Full Disk Encryption (FDE) line, in both 7200RPM and 5400RPM versions. Both are now available in 320GB capacities, or the highest of any FDE drive on the market, and Seagate promises to introduce even larger, 500GB versions soon.
more
11/05, 5:20pm
Seagate hybrid SSDs?
Memory device maker Seagate is investing as much as $100 million into developing a new type of solid-state drives (SSDs), according to a Wednesday report. According to company CEO Bill Watkins, Seagate is trying to resolve certain issues with the current technology, including SSDs' higher cost of production relative to hard disk drives and their limited read/write cycles. The company's solution would be to create a new technology that combines single-layer cell (SLC) and multi-layer cell (MLC) tech, marrying the former's superior reliability with the latter's low manufacturing cost.
more
10/17, 10:55am
OWC MacBook HD Upgrades
Other World Computing finished its week today by capitalizing on the launch of Apple's new MacBooks to ship its own set of MacBook drive upgrades. The kits take advantage of recent updates by hard drive makers and, as barebones kits, are normally less expensive than paying Apple's upgrade price. They also let owners keep the factory-stock drive, OWC is keen to add.
more
09/15, 7:30am
Seagate FreeAgent 2008
Seagate this morning kicked off it yearly overhaul of its FreeAgent external drives with both a new look and some rare features. The FreeAgent Go (pictured) and Go for Mac are both claimed as the thinnest notebook-sized drives at 12.5mm (just under 0.5in) but also have an optional dock that cradles the drive at home, simplifying the process of porting the drive outside of the home. The Mac edition also switches from USB to a rare FireWire 400/800 interface and is pre-formatted for the HFS+ file system out of the box.
more
07/10, 10:25am
Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB
Seagate today broke through a long-held barrier and released a 1.5 terabyte version of the Barracuda 7200.11. The storage is 500GB more than any other 3.5-inch desktop hard drive and is accomplished through extra refinement of perpendicular magnetic recording that allows it to fit 375GB on each of its four platters. The density also helps improve speed and lets the disk transfer data at a sustainable 120MB per second, or higher in bursts thanks to the extra bandwidth of its Serial ATA II connection.
more
07/09, 11:40am
Fujitsu Downplays SSDs
Fujitsu has no near-term plans to create solid-state hard drives (SSDs) of its own as the technology still isn't as fast it should be compared to hard drives, the company's business development VP Joel Hagberg says. He acknowledges that many notebook manufacturers are opting for the flash-based medium but argues that its performance advantage isn't as broad as other storage makers would claim. Many SSDs are very fast at random access for reading data but quickly falls apart when writing data or reading large amounts of data in a row, he says.
more
06/26, 2:05pm
Maxtor Central Axis 1TB
Seagate through its Maxtor label late Wednesday launched the Central Axis as its entry into network-attached storage for home use. The 1TB device serves as both group storage space for Mac OS X and Windows systems on the same local network but also as a remote storage server over the web. It also serves as an automatic media server for certain devices: any DLNA- or UPnP-based device, including the PS3, Xbox 360, and some Nokia Nseries phones will automatically find the Central Axis and can stream content directly from its hard drive.
more
06/24, 5:00pm
Seagate to buy NAND maker?
Seagate is rumored to be looking into buying out Intel's 49 percent stake in the IM Flash Technologies joint venture between the chip maker and Micron, a flash memory manufacturer, according to analysts. That is just one option for Seagate, but the analysts say the company would be better off buying into SanDisk, as it is not involved with any other companies and is less costly. Furthermore, they maintain that Seagate needs to purchase or team up with a NAND flash memory maker in order to be successful in its solid state drive (SSD) production.
more
05/30, 9:50am
Seagate Preps SSDs and 2TB
Seagate is gradually planning a reversal of its stance on solid-state drives, the company's CEO Bill Watkins says. The storage producer has clung to rotating hard disks but will introduce a solid-state drive in 2009 that it will primarily market to enterprise-class users, who Seagate argues are most likely to need very high-speed disks regardless of the price. In turn, the company also plans to cater to proponents of traditional storage with a 2TB drive also ready next year.
more
05/19, 2:05pm
Seagate Showcase drives
Seagate today at the 2008 Cable Show announced a new product that will add to the storage capacity of DVRs. The Showcase range will at first include a 1TB capacity drive, which will allow users to keep up to 200 more hours of HD programs. All Showcase drives will support eSATA-capable DVRs including devices from Motorola, which worked with Seagate on developing the products.
more
05/19, 9:30am
Dell XPS gets 320GB 7K HDD
Dell on Monday became the first PC builder to ship a new generation of hard drives with updates to its XPS notebook line. Each system will have the option of a 320GB Seagate Momentus 7200.3 drive that should bring desktop-like performance without a significant hit in storage; the 7,200RPM speed and doubled 16MB of cache should all but eliminate the bottlenecking that often occurs during game loading and other intensive tasks. The disk also provides a level of shock protection to avoid damaging the disk in most falls.
more
04/30, 12:10pm
CW: SSD drives overrated
People contemplating SSD versions of computers like the MacBook Air -- which costs approximately $1,300 more than the HDD edition -- may not find the performance difference worthwhile, writes Computerworld. The magazine has conducted a test of 32GB SSDs by Crucial and Ridata, in comparison to two 7200rpm hard drives by Seagate. All four drives used cloned copies of Vista Home Premium, and were benchmarked by software called HD Tach.
more
04/15, 1:00pm
Seagate vs. STEC
Seagate has begun the first of what may be several lawsuits against makers of flash memory, show filings from the US District Court in San Francisco. It has accused STEC, formerly known as Simple Technology, of violating four patents it owns, connected to the creation of flash memory -- should it win, Seagate could be granted an injunction against STEC products as well as unspecified damages. Seagate CEO Bill Watkins argues that compensation would be well-due, as it has invested heavily in developing technology for SSD drives, and it has tried to persuade other companies to license its patents.
more
03/24, 2:25pm
Seagate on SSD Lawsuit
Seagate may pull a lawsuit as its trump card if solid-state drives (SSDs) threaten to undermine its conventional hard drive business, company head Bill Watkins has said in a new interview with Fortune. The executive alleges that both Intel and Samsung are violating patents dealing with the interaction between computers and storage and that a formal complaint could follow that would either force them to change their technology or else compensate Seagate for their purported infringement.
more
01/21, 2:50pm
Seagate Momentus 250GB
Instead of focusing on the high end of mobile storage, Seagate today unveiled the Momenuts 5400.4 250GB. The Serial ATA II drive is built to make relatively large hard disks available outside of pro notebooks and as a low-cost upgrade for systems with easily swappable drives. Despite holding 125GB of data across a relatively small two platters, the drive is said to be more power-efficient and tolerant of shocks (up to 325 Gs when active) than earlier generations. An 8MB cache is standard.
more
01/08, 11:00pm
CES highlights, Gallery 1
The second day of CES has drawn to a close, with many companies making major announcements about new products and services. Intel unveiled its 45nm Core 2 mobile platform with integrated SSE4 and 6MB of cache, available in speeds ranging from 2.1GHz to 2.8GHz. Microsoft announced that its Xbox Video Marketplace service will see content from Disney-ABC and MGM, and formally denied rumors that Xbox 360 with built-in HD-DVD is in planning. HP’s MediaSmart gear was given a complete overhaul, while also introducing several new laptop products. Seagate was on hand to show a number of different new storage options, while RealNetworks showed various products that use its Rhapsody media service.
more
11/27, 11:05am
Failing MacBook drives
A previously reported manufacturing defect is resulting in permanent data loss for numerous MacBook owners, according to Retrodata -- a UK-based drive recovery firm. The company says the critical flaw resides only in Seagate 2.5-inch SATA drives produced in China with a firmware version of 7.01, and an Apple spokesman has acknowledged that the company is looking into the matter. Retrodata says the problem is so severe that Seagate should recall the hard drives, and that Apple is responsible for replacing the drives free of charge.
more
