seagate

Eying solid-state drives, Seagate tries to quell fears

The largest hard-disk drive maker is going solid-state. Slowly.

Seagate will enter the market for solid-state drives in 2009, as it slowly embraces a technology that will, in some cases, replace its bread and butter: hard disks.

"Our history is based on rotating magnetic media. But as solid-state comes online, we're embracing this new media type," said Rich Vignes, senior manager of market development at the Scotts Valley, Calif.-based company.

Seagate's first target market will be large enterprise customers. Consumer SSDs from Seagate will come later. The challenge is to convince large enterprise customers that … Read more

Report: Fujitsu to sell hard drive unit to Western Digital

Fujitsu is in talks to sell its hard disk drive business to Western Digital, according to a Japan-based report.

Western Digital is the second-largest hard disk drive maker in the world behind Seagate Technology. Fujitsu's HDD unit is ranked sixth.

Fujitsu would sell all of its plants--including those in Japan, Thailand, and the Philippines--for between 70 billion yen and 100 billion yen (approximately $660 million to $944 million), according to Japan's Nikkei news service.

This would be one of the largest business unit sell-offs for a Japanese electronics company, Nikkei said, adding that Fujitsu's hard disk drive … Read more

Seagate FreeAgent Go is our favorite external hard drive to date

The FreeAgent Go external hard drive by Seagate wins our coveted Editor's Choice award for three reasons: Design, cost per gigabyte, and speed. There are a ton of external drives out there to choose from, but we can definitely say that the FreeAgent Go takes the cake. Seagate offers the drive in multiple colors and capacities and the inexpensive price makes it perfect for users that need to access data on the run.

The FreeAgent Go is available in four colors (red, white, blue, and black) and with capacities up to 320 gigabytes. For our purposes, Seagate sent us … Read more

Supermediastore.com has the Seagate Barracuda 1TB SATA-300 Hard Drive for $225.99, after $67.80 Instant savings.

Supermediastore.com has Seagate Barracuda 1TB SATA-300 Hard Drive for $225.99, after $67.80 Instant savings. >> Regular price is $293.79 >> Sale price is $225.99 >> Savings $67.80 (23.08%) >> Click here for deal

Seagate announces new FreeAgent external hard drives

Seagate announced on Monday its fall 2008 lineup of FreeAgent external hard drives, including desktop and laptop models. They come preformatted for either Mac or PC file systems.

The laptop models, dubbed FreeAgent Go, come in four colors for PC users--silver, black, red, and blue--and only silver for Mac users. The Mac version, however, features both USB 2.0 and FireWire connections, while the PC version has only USB 2.0. The new drives also feature a docking station for easily connecting to a computer.

The FreeAgent Go drives feature Seagate's latest 2.5-inch 5400RPM internal hard drives that … Read more

Hard drive industry shows resilience

Despite industry leader Seagate's poor showing earlier this year, analysts say there's still plenty of demand for hard disk drives.

In the first quarter of 2008, HDD vendors shipped 137 million drives, which is 21 percent higher than the same quarter the year before, according to iSuppli, a market research company which keeps track of the industry. Those drives are primarily being snapped inside notebook PCs, other portable devices, desktops, and external drives.

Things weren't looking so good when Seagate reported its earnings in April, and revenue was below what analysts were expecting. But the demand for … Read more

Seagate ups ante to 1.5TB with new Barracuda hard drive

Really, one terabyte isn't enough? If so, you'll be pleased to know that your insatiable need for more digital storage has left Seagate no choice but to announce the world's first 1.5TB hard drive. The half-terabyte jump over previous highest capacity 1TB drives, Seagate is happy to point out, represents the largest jump in capacity in hard-drive history. The 3.5-inch Barracuda 7200.11 uses perpendicular magnetic recording, which squeezes more 1s and 0s per square inch than conventional drives, to pack 1.5TB of storage space over four platters. Seagate isn't sharing pricing details … Read more

Seagate joins the network storage community with Maxtor Central Axis

Seagate announced today its newest device to join the network attack storage (NAS) community: the Maxtor Central Axis.

Slated to be available in North America next month, the Central Axis promises to be a central space that hosts regular data files as well as digital content for home users. The Device supports the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) standard, meaning it will work very well with DLNA-compliant devices such as the popular games consoles Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3.

The Central Axis will also come with an easy backup solution that backs up data from any computers within … Read more

Confessions of a (tech) Deadhead

Seagate Technology CEO Bill Watkins doesn't Twitter, but he's not big on sartorial formality either--especially when it comes to ties. You know that cliche about marching to a different drummer? In this case, it's Watkins' own drummer and that's why he grooves on the Grateful Dead.

So much so that he's one of the Silicon Valley hotshots volunteering to help the University of Santa Cruz raise money for its planned archive of Grateful Dead memorabilia.

"We've got a warehouse full of posters and letters and things," Watkins says. "We want to … Read more

Dell has the first 320GB 7,200rpm laptop drive

Desktop types are always kicking their laptop counterparts around, stealing their lunch money, and making fun of their slow and undersized hard drives.

Most laptops have slower 5,400rpm or even 4,200rpm hard drives, usually between 120GB and 250GB in size. For high-end types, there are 320GB laptop hard drives, and also 7,200rpm laptop hard drives, but you couldn't get both of those specs in the same laptop drive [dramatic pause...] until now.

Fujitsu, Hitachi, and Seagate have all recently announced 320GB 7,200rpm laptop hard drives, but Dell is the first to stick them in a … Read more