MacBook Pro hard disk storage really seem to be down on its luck this generation. First was the 3Gbps SATA transfers (now fixed), which honestly didn't affected but a marginal percentage of users upgrading to SSD themselves. Now comes word from a number of irate users on the Apple support forums that claim their HDDs, specifically those spec'd at 7200RPM, are suffering from performance issues and some audible clicking / beeping sounds. The folks at Other World Computing chimed in to say that it might have something to do with the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 G-Force drives, which takes anti-shock precautions that are possibly causing both noise and extra strain. If you're not hearing anything now, we wouldn't suggest you start getting hyper paranoid over the issue -- it's the internet, where things often get blown way out of proportion, in case you haven't noticed. If you're still worried / curious, hit up the read link for the full collection of anecdotes.

[Via Engadget Spanish and MacNN]

We have no idea why Seagate buried this in a warmed-over press release touting rehashed FreeAgent for Mac drives, but there's a new $40 FreeAgent Go Dock+ that doubles as a powered three-port USB hub. Pretty convenient if you're into the whole FreeAgent Go lifestyle, we'd say, but we're sticking with our versatile bareback SATA docks.

Seagate's giving its FreeAgent Go drives a fresh new 640GB capacity ceiling, and while it's not the first external to cross that 500GB threshold, it's certainly on the thinner end of the totem pole, physically. Nothing revolutionary here otherwise, it's still the standard USB-connected with up to 480Mbps transfer with multiple color options. Also distinctly the norm? Not a bit of info on pricing or availability, but if Seagate's posting promotional materials on its main site, we suspect it's not too far off.

[Via Slashgear]

Bill Watkins, the oft-outspoken former CEO of Seagate, has thrown his support behind tech startup Vertical Circuits, who claim to have an uncanny knack for shrinking gadgets with the power of voodoo -- or rather, a patented silver ooze, but we prefer our theories. The goo works as a replacement for gold wires to connect vertically stacked chips, cleaning up the internal cable clutter and leaving more room for better processor, bigger batteries, larger displays, or just a tinier form factor. Right now the focus is on stacking flash memory, but the group says they can use the same technique for processors and other chips. At this stage, there's no product or partnership to show for it, but if they're as good as they say, we hopefully won't have to wait long to see the fruits of their labor.

Seagate's new Replica drive aims to be for PC users what Time Machine is for Macs (in fact, there's no Mac software included), and seems to do a pretty good job of it. You merely plug the drive into your computer, accept a license agreement, and you're off to the races with hassle-free incremental backups of your system. The drive is available in Single PC and Multi-PC models, with the former sporting 250GB of capacity, and the latter doing 500GB and adding in a vertical dock -- but to actually backup multiple PCs you'll have to move the drive around sneakernet style. ComputerShopper found the drive pretty slow, and while you can drag and drop files off of the drive, it doesn't actually allow you to toss specific files on and use the drive as way to move your projects around town. Still, it's simple, and the $200 starting price isn't criminal.

Read - ComputerShopper review
Read - Official Replica site

It's been a long time coming, but Seagate's finally unveiled its first 2TB hard drive, the 3.5-inch Constellation ES. The hefty spinner also comes in 500GB and 1TB varieties and runs at 7,200RPM, which should make it a bit faster than Western Digital's behemoth, according to reviews for the latter. It'll be out calendar Q3, which we take to be fancy schmancy business talk for "this Summer." Meanwhile, the 2.5-inch ES-less Constellation line sports 3 Gbps SATA and SAS 2.0 interface. Look for this one in 160GB and 500GB sizes sometime this quarter, with Dell said to be one the first companies to offer the drives. Check out one more out-of-this-world promotional image after the break.

We've seen quite a few hardware-encrypted disks hit the scene lately, but to be honest, we've always thought they were a risky investment, since all the systems were proprietary -- we wouldn't want to store our encryption-worthy data on a disk that can't be read at all in a few years, after all. That's happily about to change, though -- the Trusted Computing Group has just announced that virtually every drive maker has agreed on a set of 128-bit encryption standards covering SSDs and HDDs. That's Fujitsu, Hitachi, Seagate, Samsung, Toshiba, Western Digital, IBM, Wave Systems, LSI, and ULink Technology, if you're keeping score at home (and we know you are). Ideally this means that we'll see easy cheap disk encryption filter onto mainstream consumer storage, which would basically invalidate all those "I'm stealing this hard drive out of your laptop and using it to log into your Facebook account" crimes of passion we know the kids are into these days. Best part? Fujitsu, Seagate and Hitachi are all already shipping drives that support the TCG standards.

[Via Digg]

Evidence that the economy has been ground to a fine powder continues to pile up, and today's brought another batch of bad news. Tales of woe abound, but looming largest is Sony, which announced its 2nd quarter earnings yesterday, then warned today that they expect to post a $1.7 billion loss this year (though we've seen other reports that are now putting the number at well over $2 billion). Additionally, Samsung is expected to post a first-ever quarterly loss when it reports its earnings Friday, which are expected to run somewhere in the neighborhood of a $67.7 million net loss. Moving on, Seagate's also announced an unsuprising cut of about 6 percent of their workforce in Thailand. Finally, LG has reported a $487 million loss, while TomTom announced a "cost cutting program," meaning they're cutting about 7 percent of their global workforce. Seriously, does anyone have a light-hearted Dilbert strip or something to ease some of the pain? Sheesh.

Read - Sony, Warning of Annual Loss, Escalates Cost-Cutting plan
Read - Samsung may report first ever quarterly loss
Read - LG Electronics Posts $487 Million Loss
Read - TomTom Cost-cutting programme
Read - Seagate to lay off up to 800 local workers

After a ground-swell of angry Barracuda owners voiced concern over their failing disk drives, Seagate has fessed-to the issue. According to Seagate, a firmware bug in Barracuda 7200.11, DiamondMax 22, and Barracuda ES.2 SATA drives could make the disks "inaccessible when the host system is powered on." Right, inaccessible -- Seagate assures owners that data is not lost (it's still on the disk). However, should data loss occur, it's providing a free data recovery service. Hit the read link to find out if your drive is affected. If so, a link is provided to contact Seagate to expedite resolution on a case-by-case issue. Good on ya Seagate, way to flip a public relations fiasco into a customer support victory.

[Via The Register]