Seagate

Seagate unveils 1.5 Terabyte desktop drive

Paul Mah — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:18:02 -0400

Seagate unveiled a 1.5 Terabyte, 3.5-inch hard disk for the desktop earlier this week. Meant for the mainstream market, the Barracuda 7200.11 represents the 11th generation of Seagate's flagship drive for desktop PCs. The release of this drive marks the single largest jump in hard disk capacity in the history of hard drives, up a half-terabyte from the previous highest capacity of just 1 TB. This was possible due to the four platters based on perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology spinning inside the Barracuda 7200.11. In addition, the drive comes with a SATA interface giving three gigabytes per second, and can give a sustained data rate of 120 megabytes per second. According to Seagate, the drive is scheduled to ship in August.

For more on Seagate's 1.5TB hard drive:
- check out this InformationWorld article

Seagate plans 2TB SSD for next year

Paul Mah — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 06:21:50 -0400

Seagate will be bringing in the company's first SSD (solid state drive) offering by next year. Not surprisingly, it will be targeted squarely at the enterprise where they can afford the premium of using flash memory as a hard disk. In this article in The Inquirer, CEO Bill Watkins reiterates Seagate's long-term commitment of targeting SSD toward top-tier enterprises eager for both its higher performance and low energy consumption. Yet all the talk about SSD in the enterprise avoids the fact that it remains a technology yet to prove itself in a transaction-intensive environment. Still, with Google also looking at SSD for use in its data centers, there definitely are niche applications out there perfectly suited for SSDs.

For more on Seagate's move toward SSD:
- check out this The Inquirer article

Space Shuttle Columbia hard drive data recovered

Mehan Jayasuriya — Fri, 09 May 2008 13:16:08 -0400

Think that all the talk of the dangers of improperly disposing of corporate hard drives is just scaremongering? Let this be a lesson to you on the robustness of current data recovery technology. Most of you will recall the 2003 space shuttle Columbia tragedy that claimed the lives of all seven astronauts onboard. Well, after four and a half years, data recovery specialists have managed to recover the data from a 400MB Seagate hard drive that was aboard the ill-fated spacecraft. The drive was charred, cracked and badly damaged during the disintegration of the Columbia, and was discovered six months after the incident in a dry riverbed. Unbelievably, 99 percent of the data on the drive was still recovered. If data can be recovered from a hard drive that was onboard a space shuttle that disintegrated, you've got to wonder if it's a good idea to simply toss out drives that appear to be "dead." Kind of makes you reconsider that hard disk crusher, doesn't it?

For more on the data recovery:
- see this ComputerWorld article

Is open-source software a blessing?

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 06:59:58 -0400

Open-source software may be a blessing in disguise for IT offices that are forced to tighten their belts because of economic woes. "The economic slowdown in the United States may actually boost demand for open source services," said Gard Little, program manager, IDC's Worldwide Services and Emerging Services Opportunities research programs. "If organizations adopt more open source software as part of a strategy to reduce software costs, the demand for related services should increase." Does this make sense to you?

For more on the benefits of open source software:
- Check out this Tekrati article

For more tech stories from the FierceCIO network:
> Seagate sells 1 billion drives
> Samsung shakeup claims chairman
> Windows Mobile 7: coming late 2009?

SPOTLIGHT: Seagate sells 1 billion drives

Mehan Jayasuriya — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 11:40:40 -0400

If Seagate had a sign outside of their corporate headquarters, it might read "Over 1 billion storage drives served." The company announced this week that it is the first to have shipped 1 billion storage drives, since it was first founded in 1979. What's more: the company intends to ship the next billion in just five years. Article

Maxtor malware debacle explained

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 06:59:57 -0500

Last week, we heard a rather unsettling tale of how nearly 2000 Maxtor Personal Storage 3200 drives shipped with the Virus.Win32.AutoRun.ah virus on board. How exactly does something like that happen? Gizmodo decided to investigate and got the scoop straight from the horse's mouth. "Reuters reported that it was a Seagate disk discovered in Taiwan, but the truth is, the Maxtor Basics 3200 (aka PS 3200) is available all over the world, and the infected lot made its way to many regions including China, Russia and the Middle East. Our source confirmed that the problem was discovered internally almost two months ago, and only boiled over last week when the Taiwanese government got mad at China." A full internal investigation then revealed that the virus originated at a factory in China, where it was "accidentally transferred" on to production drives by a Seagate employee. If you've got one of the affected drives, head over to Seagate's PS3200 support page for your free copy of Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7.0.

For more on the drive debacle:
- see this Gizmodo article

Maxtor Personal Storage 3200 drives ship with virus

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 06:59:55 -0500

If you've purchased a Maxtor Personal Storage 3200 unit within the last three months, you might want to batten down the hatches. Turns out, an unspecified number of the units managed to get infected with the Virus.Win32.AutoRun.ah file before leaving the hands of a Seagate sub-contractor in China. To find out if you have one of the affected units, call up Seagate and give them your serial number.

Hard drive shortage on the horizon?

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 06:59:58 -0400

Sure, you've heard it all before: manufacturing problems in an East Asian country could lead to a shortage of hard drives, take shelter in an underground bunker, etc. Well, this time around, it's a little different. Apparently, the International Trade Commission (ITC) has begun an investigation into the hard drive manufacturing/purchasing practices of Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell (i.e. every major drive vendor). The charge? That all five companies use technology that infringes on a patent held by California residents Steven and Mary Reiber. According to the couple, the sale of such drives in the U.S. violates section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930. But wait: there's more. Apparently "Section 337 of the Tariff Act bars the importation of products into the US that infringe on patents owned by others in the US." That means that any hard drives found to use the infringing tech might be banned from being imported into this country--and since the vast majority of hard drives used in the U.S. are manufactured overseas, that could spell some big trouble for little America. Could it really happen? Seems somewhat unlikely: As you may recall, the U.S. Court of Appeals stepped in to prevent a similar ruling on Qualcomm chips from crippling the wireless industry not too long ago. Still, if you feel like stocking up on hard drives and canned goods, go right ahead.

For more on the possible shortage:
- see this Ars Technica article

ALSO NOTED: Jammie Thomas Appealing RIAA trial decision; Dell vs. Apple, 10 years later;

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 06:59:51 -0400

> Facebook and iTunes to announce music partnership? Article
> HP's iPAQ 110 and 210 PDAs get priced. Article
> Asus preps a laptop with user-replaceable hardware. Video
> Dell XPS M1530 revealed? Article
> Seagate launches first Hybrid Hard Drive (HHD). Article
> Jammie Thomas Appealing RIAA trial decision. Article

And Finally... Dell vs. Apple, 10 years later. Chart

Seagate intros new enterprise hard drives

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 06:59:57 -0400

As any storage enthusiast can tell you, not all hard drives are created equal. Take Seagate's new line of enterprise-worthy drives, for example. There's the Barracuda FDE (available in 2008 in capacities up to 1TB), which looks like a regular old 7200 rpm drive on the surface but boasts full, native AES encryption for security fanatics. Then there's the Cheetah 15k.6, which claims a 28 percent performance boost while lowering power consumption. Seagate calls it "the highest-performance drive ever in a 3.5-inch form factor"; it'll ship in 2008 in capacities up to 450GB. Finally, there's the Momentus 5400.4, a perpendicular-recording drive aimed squarely at the enterprise laptop market. This puppy can take up to 325 Gs of shock during operation and up to 900 Gs when the drive isn't spinning. It'll be available later this year in sizes up to 250GB.

For more on Seagate's new enterprise line:
- see this press release on the Barracuda and the Momentus
- and this one on the Cheetah