Seagate
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Analyst sees Micron joint venture, SanDisk as possible targets for Seagate
Seagate has already made its intentions about jumping into the SSD game pretty clear, and one analyst now says he sees two clear options at the company's disposal if it wants to seriously make a go of it, each of which involve Seagate shelling out a good chunk of cash. According to Lazard's Daniel Amir, one option would be to buy out Intel's 49% stake in the IM Flash Technologies joint venture it has with Micron, which would reportedly cost anywhere from $1 to $2 billion (not to mention put Seagate on the outs with Intel). More likely than that, Amir says, would be an acquisition of or partnership with SanDisk, which he says would be an ideal fit given Seagate's expertise on the enterprise side and SanDisk's retail knowhow. Amir doesn't put a price tag on that option though, but you can be sure it wouldn't be cheap.
Seagate to jump into the SSD game, 2TB spinners planned for next year
SSDs are the new heat, and while all sorts of upstarts have been cranking them out old-school drive manufacturer Seagate has mostly sat it out and made a lot of noise about patent lawsuits. The lawsuits aren't going away (obviously), but CEO Bill Watkins told PC World yesterday that the company is finally getting ready to release its first SSD sometime next year, as well as launch a line of 2TB traditional hard drives. Watkins said that SSDs weren't yet price-competitive for consumers (uh, yeah), and that Seagate won't focus on consumer SSDs until the price falls to the 10-cents-per-GB level. Until then, the target market is data centers looking to process data quickly or save on energy consumption costs -- the rest of us will just have to save our pennies, apparently.
Seagate reveals Showcase external HDD: for media centers and DVRs
Great, just great. Soon after Western Digital made a fool of itself by introducing an external hard drive "certified" for use with DISH Network HD DVRs, along comes Seagate to further fuel the hype machine. Announced at this year's Cable Show (after being mentioned at CES), the Showcase storage solution is "designed" to extend storage capacity of DVRs and media centers. In a similar vein, the outfit's newest drives are "compatible with Motorola's s-SATA-capable HD DVRs," and they also come with USB 2.0 ports and up to 1TB of space. No word on a price or any of that jazz, but those who can't figure out that an external hard drive is an external hard drive can look for 'em to land in Q3.
Mac 101: External HDs
More Mac 101, our series of basic tips for new and returning Mac users. Since most Mac models don't offer extra drive bays, external hard disks are the way to go for adding vast storage capacity to your computer. External HDs are great for storing large projects, moving huge amounts of data from place to place, or backing up via Time Machine. Hard disks are a commodity product nowadays: the market is flooded with a cornucopia of options, most of them cheap and easy to install. So which is right for you? The trick is this: find out who makes the actual hard drive inside the external enclosure (that is, inside the nicely-designed plastic or metal box that sits on or under your desk).It's what's inside that counts, and we'll explore after the jump.
Hard drive recovered from shuttle Columbia used to complete experiment
Although it's been several years since the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, it looks like some of the data gathered during the orbiter's final mission will be put to good use. A hard drive salvaged from the wreckage contains the results of an experiment to study the way xenon gas flows in microgravity, and the results were published in the April edition of a journal called Physical Review E. The 400MB Seagate drive was originally thought to be destroyed, but workers and engineers reconstructing the orbiter from the remaining debris found it during the process and sent it off for recovery, where 99 percent of the data was extracted. It then took several years for lead researcher Robert Berg and his team to analyze the findings, but they're happy with the results -- we only wish they hadn't come at so dear a price.[Thanks, Laura]
Seagate: 1 billion drives served
Seagate claims it's the first company to hit the magical "one billion drives shipped" mark, and doesn't plan on slowing down any time soon. The company was founded in 1979, with its first drive offering up 5MB of storage for a whopping $1,500. We've certainly come a long way in 29 years, and Seagate expects to ship its next billion drives in less than five years. Of course, with all this "cloud computing" talk we'd think drive sales have to slow down at some point, but there's certainly no sign of our GB appetites abating just yet. Now if you'll excuse us, we need to download this 7GB MMO demo to a secondary hard drive.
Seagate sues SSD maker STEC
Seagate was talking a big game last month about how SSD makers like Samsung and Intel were infringing its patents, and the company wasn't joking around, following up all that tough talk with... what appears to be a test case against relatively minor vendor STEC. Seagate says STEC's drives violate four patents it holds on SSD interfaces and that while "it's not a big financial issue yet," the company wants "to set things straight." As you'd expect, STEC doesn't feel quite as casual about the situation, saying that it's been making SSDs since 1994, before any of Seagate's patents were filed, and that it's going to aggressively defend Seagate's "desperate" claims and seek to invalidate its patents. many of which it believes aren't even relevant to SSD technology. That sounds like a fight to us -- get ready for some nonstop paperwork legal thrills, people.Read - NYT article about the suitRead - Official STEC response
Seagate warns it might sue SSD makers for patent infringement
It may already be dipping its own toes into the wild new world of solid state hard drives, but Seagate apparently isn't so keen on others ditching traditional hard drives, and it's now indicating that it might even sue 'em if SSD really starts to catch on. That word comes from none other than Seagate CEO Bill Watkins, who told Fortune recently that he's "convinced" that SSD makers like Samsung and Intel are violating some of Seagate's patents (as well as Western Digital's) that deal with the way a "storage device communicates with a computer." Somewhat curiously though, especially given Seagate's own plans, Watkins doesn't see SSD catching on in a big way anytime soon, saying that, "realistically, I just don't see the flash notebook sell." As Fortune points out, however, if prices keep dropping at the rate they have been, that "sell" could soon be a whole lot easier to make, which would also make that lawsuit quite a bit more likely.[Via Slashdot]
Did you give the gift of a hacked account this Christmas?
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/Did_you_get_the_gift_of_a_hacked_account_this_holiday'; Do you even know? Many digital photo frames sold at Best Buy, Target, Costco and Sam's Club have a particularly insidious trojan embedded in them - one designed to thieve your account information for a variety of online games. One of the primo geek gifts of 2007, variations of these devices were bundled with darn near everything gadgety during the holidays. Some percentage of these contain a professionally written and very stealthy little gremlin that Computer Associates has dubbed Mocmex that is apparently capable of robustly concealing itself from many detection engines. This isn't an amateur-night special, by all reports. This is professional nastiness, with multiple variants.
Seagate's 250GB laptop drive now shipping for $165
That does it. Seagate's 250GB Momentus 5400.4 laptop drive is now shipping. Spec-wise, it's on par with Hitachi, Samsung, Western Digital, and Fujitsu and makes 9.5-mm high, 2.5-inch, 250GB disks spinning at 5,400RPM near ubiquitous. Seagate's explanation for coming so late to the party? Easy, now is simply the right time. Whatever, just throw your keys in the bowl and kiss your husband goodnight, we can sort out the details later. [Via TGDaily]
MusicGiants launches VideoGiants, with HD movies from Paramount
The HD digital distribution club just got a little bigger, as lossless audio distributor MusicGiants is launching its VideoGiants service with 250 movies from Paramount, and additional content from HDNet. Available in 1080p or 1080i WMV format, users can purchase the movies in 10-packs for $159 delivered via Seagate hard drives or, in a few months, one at a time via direct download to a home media server. After that, it can be viewed via the media PC or Media Extender (including Xbox 360). MusicGiants has been selling HD audio tracks to high end home theater owners via its network of dealers and installers for about two years, with plans to make this type of service available to the mass market soon. Still think the future of HD content is on shiny discs?
XStreamHD details emerge, DTS-HD and up to 2TB storage
Details about the new satellite HD provider, XStreamHD are starting to come to light in advance of their press conference tomorrow. We already knew about collaboration with DTS, and now thanks to a press release we know that the promised 7.1-channel audio will be coming to you in DTS-HD MA format. Similarly, the press release reveals that the Seagate drives in the box allow you to stuff in 2TB of content. Good stuff, but the question we're really waiting to see answered is all about what content will be available. The device is coming into focus, so XStreamHD hopefully will bring some answers to their press conference for us.
Hands-on with Seagate's BlackArmor
Hey look, a shiny black box. Not just any box though, that's the 160GB BlackArmor portable hard drive with built-in AES encryption. Sorry, no way we could think of to photograph all that security, but we've got a few more glowing shots of overlapping rectangles in the gallery for you geometry types. If nothing else, at least you get a feel for the size of the little guy.%Gallery-12826%
Seagate introduces new BlackArmor secure hard drive, Pipeline DVR drives, new FreeAgents
Seagate busted out a slew of new storage gear today, including the new 160GB BlackArmor portable hard drive with built-in AES encryption pictured above. The tinfoil-hat-friendly drive, available in Q2 for $149, automatically encrypts all the data stored on it, keeping it away from prying eyes if lost or stolen. On the other end of the spectrum, Seagate is also introducing free software called Central Axis that allows you to access content stored on a Maxtor Shared Storage II device from any web browser without having to open firewall ports, and announcing partnerships with Sanyo, HarmanBecker and PortoMedia to incorporate Seagate's D.A.V.E "wireless mobile storage capacity" tech into their products. Seagate says future Harman car entertainment systems will be able to store music, movies and games using D.A.V.E., and that Sanyo's using the tech in its Xacti camcorders. On the more mundane side of things, the desktop FreeAgent line now tops out at 1TB, the FreeAgent Go will hit 250GB by the end of the quarter, and there's a new line of DVR-specific drives called Pipeline HD that are rated to work in case temps as high as 167 degrees Fahrenheit. Pipeline drives will come in sizes ranging from 320GB to 1TB, and they're targeted primarily at HTPC manufacturers -- but we'd bet a few Tivo-hackin' ears just perked up out there.
Seagate FreeAgent drives not down with Linux?
It seems as if FreeAgent owners that prefer a more open operating system have been experiencing issues with the drive for a little while now, but we're finally seeing that Seagate isn't exactly rushing to the rescue. Apparently, the power-saving settings on the drives in question only function as advertised in Windows, and users running Linux (and OS X, we presume) could see their FreeAgent duck into inactivity, only to have the USB connection drop and reconnect as USB 1.1. Furthermore, we've even seen an e-mail response from the firm tersely stating that it "does not provide support for Personal / External Storage products (and / or accessories) used in a Linux environment." So, dear readers, are any of you fighting this same battle, and if so, have you found a sufficient workaround?Update: The workaround you were hoping for? Yeah, check this out. Thanks, nerdgod!Read - Seagate snubs LinuxRead - E-mail response
Some MacBook hard drives contain fatal defect, according to report
We've been hearing vague rumblings about potentially flawed MacBook hard drives for a day or two now, but a report from UK data-recovery firm Retrodata finally backs up all the noise with some hard data -- according to the company, revision 7.0.1 Seagate drives manufactured in China have defective read / write heads that can become detached and slide across the surface of the platters, making recovery impossible. Apple says it's only received "a few reports" of the problem, but Retrodata says the issue is severe enough to warrant a recall. MacBook users will want to fire up Apple System Profiler ASAP and check under the Serial-ATA listing to see what kind of drive they have -- and probably start backing things up, just to be safe.
Seagate shuts the gate
The horse has bolted. Do be a dear and go out and shut the gate. You may remember that news broke earlier this week that Maxtor/Seagate drives were coming out rigged to thieve your World of Warcraft account credentials, fresh from the factory. Seagate responded with a notice that is hard to find, unless you know exactly where to look - no mention of the debacle appears to be on their front page, news, or press-releases.
Virus on Maxtor HDDs targets MMO players
Buyer beware, Seagate had released a notice saying that a sizable number of Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 harddrives manufactured since August of this year may be infected with a virus known as "Virus.Win32.AutoRun.ah." The virus is known to probe drive data looking for passwords, and sends them to a central server located somewhere in China. Evidently, the problem stemmed from a specific sub-contractor, and while the issue has already been resolved on their end, the infected harddrives are still floating around in circulation.What makes this story of particular interest to us is that the virus seems to be looking specifically for passwords for games popular with Chinese MMO players, most notably WSGame, Perfect World, and World of Warcraft. In the announcement on their website, Seagate, which owns the Maxtor brand, describes the effects of the virus as "minimal." If it was our WoW account that were hacked because of their oversight, that's hardly the word choice we'd use. If you've picked up a new harddrive from Maxtor since August, it might be worth checking your specific model number and calling customer service just to hedge your bets. Here's hoping this is only an isolated case and we don't see anything like this in the future.
Some Maxtor Personal Storage 3200s shipped with virus
How convenient -- your shiny new Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 may have come preloaded with a nasty virus right out of the box. That's right folks, you may not even need to open any suspicious emails or surf over to dodgy websites, as an undisclosed amount of drives produced by a company sub-contract manufacturer located in China were reportedly sent out with the Virus.Win32.AutoRun.ah program already loaded. Apparently, the molar virus is one that get its kicks by searching for passwords to online games (World of Warcraft included) and sending them back to a "server located in China," and as if that wasn't enough, it can also disable virus detection software and delete other molar viruses without breaking a sweat. In order to determine whether your drive is one of the lucky (or unlucky) ones, feel free to phone up Seagate with the serial number in hand, and if you haven't already updated your anti-virus software, now would probably be a splendid time to do so.[Thanks, overseatrader]
In the battle of 1TB drives, nobody wins
With the holidays fast approaching and both Leopard's Time Machine and Windows Home Server loosed upon your desktop, we know what you're asking the Santa man for: a new 7200rpm 1TB hard drive. The question is, which one to purchase: Hitachi, Seagate, or Western Digital. Well, according to a review over at Hot Hardware, it doesn't matter, much. Those looking for the best price can find the WD Caviar GP on-line for about $0.27 per GB compared to the Hitachi's $0.31 per GB price. Seagate's Barracuda 7200.11 tops the list at $0.33 per GB. That's a big jump in heat, noise, and price when compared to the $0.19 per GB required for a 7200rpm 500GB drive. However, if mass capacity is your priority and available slots are limited, then a 1TB disk will do you fine.
