Seagate
Latest
Hard disk makers form Hybrid Storage Alliance
With the format wars going on in one part of the tech world, it is good to know that some companies can still see the benefit of coming together. Putting aside their competitive differences, hard disk makers Hitachi, Seagate, Toshiba, and Samsung, have joined forces to form the Hybrid Storage Alliance, a group advocating -- you guessed it -- the use of hybrid drives. As you may or may not remember, these new storage devices combine the capacity of conventional platter drives with the speed of flash memory. Put that together with Microsoft's Windows ReadyDrive, and now you have longer battery life and faster boot-up times. While we appreciate the push the "Alliance" is making for the adoption of anything that makes laptop usage more enjoyable, we would rather see them create a group with SanDisk and push SSD prices down even more. Plus, where's Western Digital up in this piece?
Seagate continues to push areal density boundaries
As the war between storage companies wages on, the primary target that everyone's focusing on is areal density, or a measure of how tightly data can be packed onto the surface of a disk. Although Seagate already holds the crown (for now) for magnetic recording density, the company's R&D department isn't slowing down to celebrate. While perpendicular implementations have been a successful start, it's expected to top out "around one terabit per square inch," while the division's goal is closer to "fifty terabits per square inch." Obviously, a large part of attaining such lofty goals comes from heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), but Seagate is now keying in on "bit-pattern media" to compliment said technology. On current disks, each bit is represented by "an island of about 50 magnetic grains, but since these patches are irregularly shaped, each dot must cover a certain area if it is to remain distinct." By chemically encoding an "organized molecular pattern onto the platter's substrate," however, HAMR can put a single bit on every grain, theoretically boosting the amount of data that can fit (and remain stable). Researchers also stated that disk sectors were quickly becoming a thing of the past, and that they hoped to replace them with "self-organized magnetic arrays, lithographically patterned along a platter's circumferential tracks." If all goes as planned, 3.5-inch drives holding "up to 300 terabits of information" could be readily available by 2012, and Seagate even plans to implement its data-squeezing principles into its "Probe" flash-like memory modules, which will definitely come in handy when we're all toting 500-megapixel digicams.[Via Joystiq]
CE-Oh yes he did! Part XXII - Watkins apologizes for Ce-Oh no Part XIX
Finally man, a tech exec cuts through the heaps of banal press statements and glad-handing interviews to stand up and tell it like it is -- and boom, dude gets eaten alive. Yeah, we're talking about Bill Watkins, who was recently quoted as saying, "Let's face it, we're not changing the world. We're building a product that helps people buy more crap - and watch porn." Damn skippy Bill, you done the deed, now don't back out! Well, too late; apparently Bill sent out a memo to his company apologizing for the statement: "... unfortunately, and unwisely, I also used pornography as an example to illustrate a point. Fortune Magazine chose to focus narrowly on this example in their headline." Well, c'mon, you can't fault everybody for focusing in on the sound bite; but if you want to take a lesson in the school of stonewalling, without naming names we've got a few good coaches we could send your way.
Seagate vid unveils strange testing methods, Andre the Giant sound-alike
Ever since we got perpendicular last year with Hitachi, we've been waiting for 'em to be showed up by a competitor, and we believe we've finally found a match in Seagate. What Seagate Singapore lacks in slick production values it makes up for with a ridiculous premise and a strangely uncanny Andre the Giant sound-alike voicing "grandpa," the Seagate Pocket Drive tasked with explaining the hardships in his past to all the little Pocket Drive chilluns. Hilarity ensues, peep the video after the break.
CE-Oh no he didn't! Part XIX - Watkins says Seagate "helps people buy crap... and watch porn"
Unexpected candidness is a recurring theme of our CE-Oh no! series of posts, but this latest example from Bill Watkins, the CEO of Seagate, truly takes the biscuit. At a recent corporate dinner in San Francisco, the Texan CEO produced a quotable line edgy enough to give any PR people in the immediate vicinity an instant heart attack. In his exact words: "Let's face it, we're not changing the world. We're building a product that helps people buy more crap - and watch porn." We're gonna have to give the guy a break for two reasons: a) alcohol was readily available, and b), all those naughty digital photos have gotta be stored somewhere, and Seagate is in the digital storage business. Besides, the rest of Watkin's quotes are relatively thought provoking: his views on media distribution ("It's the content that's important"), Dell's problems -- no, not those ones -- ("They don't understand the consumer"), and other areas of the technology industry appear to be fresh and honest. Maybe just a bit too honest this time around.
Seagate launches updated version of drive encryption
There's nothing like starting the week with a little encryption, eh? Seagate has just announced an update to its hardware-based built-in drive encryption. Previously, the company had brought Full Disk Encryption to its Momentus 5400.2 mobile drive. This new update ships with 128-bit AES and a "faster serial advanced technology attachment interface." Essentially, according to The San Francisco Chronicle, all data traveling to or from the disk will be encoded and decoded by the encryption chip. However, there's one little problem, as Scott Shimomura, senior product marketing manager for Seagate, told the Chronicle: "If the password has been lost to the drive, then, yes, the drive becomes unusable." That means all your data. Consumers should expect to pay a $100 or less per drive premium for the privilege and should see the updated drives on shelves in the beginning of 2007.[Via CIO, illustration courtesy The San Francisco Chronicle]
Seagate Pink Pocket hard drive, a way to support breast cancer research
In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Seagate is launching a line of limited edition Pink Pocket hard drives beginning October 1. The 6GB USB 2.0 drive, which will retails for $110, also comes loaded with music by Joan Jett -- whom we hear doesn't give a damn about her bad reputation -- Stefy, Toby Lightman and others. Seagate says that 10 percent of each Pink Pocket sold will go the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, in support of research to eradicate this awful disease that affects so many -- over 200,000 American women will be diagnosed this year alone. We can't think of an easier or more digitally capacious way to make a donation to such a worthy cause.
Seagate claims world record for magnetic recording density
While researchers in academia have the luxury of playing around with exotic technologies like nano-clusters, shape-shifting lasers, and nanomagnetic vortices, the engineers at Seagate know that they actually have to profit off of their research, so for now they're sticking with traditional magnetic recording techniques in order to push the limits of hard drive capacity with new and exciting storage densities. Using now-standard perpendicular recording heads and media manufactured with current production techniques, the company recently demoed drives with a record-breaking 421Gb/in² data density, which should allow for 500GB 2.5-inch notebook drives, 2.5TB 3.5-inch desktop drives, and 1-inch to 1.8-inch consumer electronics drives that can store between 40GB and an impressive 275GB, starting in 2009. Looking beyond perpendicular recording, Seagate researchers say that the still nascent Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) and bit patterned media techniques should eventually allow mind-boggling densities of up to 50Tb/in², which is surely more space than anyone could possibly need, ever. (We know that last part's actually untrue, but we just included it so that future generations perusing our archives can have a good, hindsight-enabled laugh at our naïveté).
Seagate hoping to get 120GB drives into the iPod?
If you're as burned out about iPhone rumors as we are, maybe rumors of new storage capacities (finally) coming to the iPod can grab your attention. Engadget found some comments in Business Week from Seagate CEO William Watkins on the state of small-format storage, including whether the Flash memory craze has fazed the company and what's coming down the pipeline in 1.8 inch hard drives. Apparently, the company will have a 120GB 1.8 inch hard drive ready for the December quarter, which would be ripe for the iPod - as it's been stuck at 60GB since Fall 2004.This is obviously no indication of whether these drives will actually make it into the iPod, but it's great to know they're available, which means there's a chance. Hold your breath at your own risk.
Hitachi sez: 1TB drives by end of year
We don't pretend to attract too many readers who were around when IBM unleashed their model 350 hard disk in the RAMAC some fifty years ago. So you regular, mild-mannered geeks probably aren't aware that the original magnettic spinner featured no less than 50, 24-inch platters for a whopping (at that time) 5MB of storage. Why 24-inches? Easy, the disk was engineered to be "small enough" to fit through a standard door frame! My my, how times have changed. Today we're squeezing 12GB of storage into Jetsonian 1-inch drives while Seagate merrily stuffs a full 750GB of perpendicular goodness into a 3.5-incher. And with drive capacities effectively doubling every two years, it comes as little surprise to hear a product VP from Hitachi predicting a 3.5-inch drive sporting 1TB (1,000GB) before the year is up. Still, it's always good to get the poop direct from the source, so to speak.
Seagate hoping to get 60GB and 120GB drives into iPods
If you haven't been paying close attention to the theoretical glass ceiling that the iPod has struck, you may not realize that Apple's darling has been capped at 60GB for quite awhile now. While the iPod with video is, in our humble opinion, very ripe for a refresh, the holdup could be history if Seagate has anything to do with it. The world's "largest hard drive manufacturer" isn't fazed by the recent flash-based memory craze, and feels that even NAND can't oust the tried and true storage platters on its own. William Watkins, the company's CEO, recently stated that he felt quite secure in his operations, and that while flash memory had its place, consumers needing spacious drives for backup and home / vehicle media storage will be skipping over the small stuff and heading straight for the hard drives. Regardless, recent analyst reactions to the less-than-stellar financial performance from the company has sparked questions about how it plans to stage a comeback in a flash-driven world, and the answer just might be the iPod. Watkins noted that Seagate hasn't been competitive in the high-capacity 1.8-inch drive arena, but we latched onto a certain comment regarding his intentions to change that -- in regards to 60GB and 120GB 1.8-inch drives, Watkins claimed that the company "will have one in the December quarter," which is obviously prime fodder for new iPod speculation (you know, since that's the holiday shopping season and all). While we weren't told outright that Seagate was in line to supply Apple with these larger drives, we sure hope somebody hooks it up with more capacity, and besides, there's never a time like the present to crank up the rarely-stagnant Apple rumor mill once again.
Seagate goes 1TB with Maxtor Shared Storage II
Seagate knows that you can never have too much storage space at your disposal, which is why the company's just bulked up its well-received NAS line with the 1TB Maxtor Shared Storage II. Like other products of the same ilk, the SS II allows up to 20 connected Mac or Windows PCs to send and receive data to and from the two 7,200RPM 500GB hard drives, which can also be configured in a RAID 1 array for an extra level of protection. A high-speed Gigabit Ethernet connection should ensure rapid file transfers, and two built-in USB ports allow you to connect a printer or other peripheral device for sharing among multiple users. You're also getting UPnP support here, so with the proper adapters you can stream tunes, vids, and pics to compatible networked A/V gear throughout your pad. The Shared Storage II is scheduled for release sometime this month, but such a capacious device doesn't come cheap: expect to throw down around $900 if you're interested in this whole-house storage and backup solution.
Seagate's leaking hard drives for 10x the fun
The wild and wacky frontier of hard drive technology is always full of surprising new ways to keep those drive capacities growing, and this new patent for leaking nanotube-housed lubricant onto disc platters is no exception. Apparently, a heated hard disc is capable of cramming more data into closer quarters, but the method hasn't been implemented in current drives since the heat evaporates the lubricant that allows the recording head to travel smoothly over the disc, causing a fatal disc crash. Seagate's new patent addresses the issue by storing lubricant in a special material made from millions of carbon nanotubes and embedded in the drive housing. As the disc spins, lubricant is slowly leaked out, and the disc can be kept safe for its whole lifetime. The upshot of all this is that Seagate can use the heat-assisted recording to cram several terabits per square inch into a drive -- 10 times as much data into the disc than is currently possible. We guess there'll be a bit of a wait for this to make it to market, but we greatly look forward to an educational video on the subject all the same.[Via New Scientist]
Maxtor Fusion personal media hub launched
Remember Project Fusion? Well that effort to consolidate, then turn your media loose on the web via Fabrik's software and Maxtor's disks is now product. Seagate's Maxtor Fusion personal media hub holds up to 500GBs of your digital content which can be shared both privately and publicly via a web browser. Fabrik's so-called "webtop" interface makes use of AJAX and tags to provide the responsiveness and drag-n-drop flexibility generally associated with desktop apps and supports browser plug-ins for both Windows Media Player and QuickTime for seamless access to slideshows, videos, and music independent of platform. Kind of like your own You Tube and Flickr service in a box, eh? The Maxtor Fusion features a 7200RPM 500GB disk, Gigabit Ethernet, and 2 x USB 2.0 ports. Available now for $799 exclusively from J&R Music in NYC with more retailers on deck for the summer.
Laptop Vista Premium certification will require hybrid HDDs
Far from being a niche technology that just happens to fully thrive in Windows Vista, it turns out that those hybrid hard drives we've been following for some time will actually be required equipment for laptops wishing to sport the Vista Premium logo. TG Daily caught up with Microsoft's Windows Client Performance program manager Matt Ayres at TechEd 2006 to pin him down about recent updates to the Windows Logo Device Program Requirements, and sure enough, Ayres confirmed that the new wording does indeed mean that hybrid drives will be part-and-parcel of Premium-labeled mobile systems released after June 1, 2007. As you may or may not recall, these so-called ReadyDrive HDDs manufactured by Samsung, Seagate, and unnamed others offer up to 256MB of on-board flash memory for faster boot times and better battery life thanks to buffering that reduces the amount of necessary drive spinning.[Thanks, Mack S.]
Seagate announces bevy of new drives
Seagate's not holding out on us today, people. They've launched a whole slew of new drives, such as: the Momentus 5400 PSD (Power-Saving Drive), a 5,400RPM drive with 256MB non-volatile memory -- also known as a hybrid drive (which we've been hearing oh so much about); the Momentus 5400.2 FDE, their latest mobile drive, now with full disc AES encryption; the Momentus 5400.3, the largest yet laptop drive with 160GB of storage space on those tiny 2.5-inch platters; the Momentus 7200.2, a 160GB 7,200RPM 2.5-inch drive; the Savvio 10K.2 146GB 10k RPM 2.5-inch drive (small enough for a laptop, designed for a blade server); the ST18 1.8-inch 60GB perpendicular media-device drive; and, of course, a new 8GB Pocket Drive. Expect those to trickle out throughout the year, but we'll be paying especially close attention to our 160GB laptop drive (or, preferably, the 200GB Toshiba), oh yes we will.[Via TG Daily]
Samsung, Seagate show off ReadyDrive HDD prototypes
No surprises here: we've known since last WinHEC that Samsung was working on a so-called ReadyDrive hard drive that sports a 128MB flash buffer for enabling lower laptop power consumption, and just as we suspected, they've unveiled a working prototype of the technology at this year's conference. Also on hand with their own ReadyDrive was Seagate, who, like Samsung, plan to release their model when Vista finally starts shipping, as only the next-gen operating system will have the proper ATA driver command sets to allow for such a large buffer. PCMag was on the scene for one of Samsung's demos, and claim that a laptop running an office apps script only needed to access the hard drive every three to four minutes, which could result in ReadyDrive-equipped laptops sipping up to 40% less juice than models with those outdated, perpetually-spinning HDDs.
Hitachi rolls out Travelstar 5K160 160GB 2.5-in perpendicular drive
It's about time. Hitachi may be the granddaddy of perpendicular media (if not, they're certainly the technology's biggest booster), but the company has been a little slow to shrink its high-capacity drives down to 2.5 inches. But the company is now prepared to follow such competitors as Seagate and Toshiba, with its own 160GB, 2.5-inch drive. The 5400RPM Travelstar 5K160 drive is expected to sell for $270 to OEMs and $300 to consumers. Hitachi plans a 1.8-inch version by the end of the year; they're playing catchup there as well, since Toshiba's 1.8-incher is already on the market.
Seagate's 750GB Pushbutton Back-up Hard Drive
We'd heard it, it leaked, it got reviewed, then announced, now it's time to get your 750GB perp drives on people. Seagate's new 750GB Pushbutton Back-up Hard Drive isn't by an means out of the ordinary -- it's an external drive with USB 2.0 and FireWire, the only difference is it's 750GB in a single drive, not two drive in RAID 0. For what you're getting the $559 doesn't even really seem that out of control, and you'll have your chance to get one starting next month, according to Seagate. We're not going to ask what the hell kind of data you've got that requires you to go buy a 750GB drive (or a couple of 'em for an array, as it were), but copious storage early adopters, we tip our hats to you.
Seagate's Barracuda 750GB drive reviewed
No doubt you remember the leaked specs on Seagate's new Baracuda 7200.10 series of perpendicular drives. Well, Seagate just made it officially, uh, official and PC World has a review for ya just to prove it. Now, we already knew it would be the biggest 3.5-incher around, but PC World tells us that it might also be the best. In a "first look" of the SATA/300, 16MB cache version, PCW found the new 'cuda to scream across the spectrum of tests ranking it first overall among the bevy of 7200rpm spinners they've tested, bested only be the 10,000rpm Raptor X. Expect the 750GB model they tested to hit the streets for about $590, or $0.79/GB, which isn't really that bad.
