Storage drive makers Seagate and LaCie on Wednesday announced an agreement that will see the former buy a majority, 64.5-percent share in LaCie. The deal will see about $186 million change hands, and the product portfolios will be merged. The focus will also be on expanding the storage market in Europe and Japan.
Seagate chief Steve Luczo in an interview published late in the week remained skeptical of flash memory. In the sit-down with Forbes, he saw systems like the MacBook Air and Windows ultrabooks as still far too cost-prohibitive to make sense for most users. Befitting his company's heavy dependence on rotating storage, he saw many of those systems either needing a hybrid flash and rotating hard drive or else leaning heavily on cloud storage with a conventional disk.
Seagate on Monday outlined a new technology that promised very high storage density. Heat-assisted magnetic recording, or HAMR, would be just the third major rotating hard drive technique in the market and even in its first generation would lead to one terabit per square inch, a 55 percent boost over today's 620 gigabits per inch. While shy on what HAMR entailed, it noted the technique was delivering performance that had previously been thought "impossible."
Seagate has continued to expand its GoFlex hard drive system, which features interchangeable interfaces for interoperability between various connection types. The company's latest adapters enable users to upgrade their existing GoFlex drives with a Thunderbolt interface to take advantage of fast transfer speeds on Apple's latest Macs and a number of upcoming Windows machines. In our full review, we'll take a closer look at the Thunderbolt adapter for GoFlex portable drives.
The Federal Trade Commission has ruled that Western Digital sell its desktop hard drive manufacturing assets and some Intellectual Property rights to Toshiba, following its multi-billion purchase of Hitachi. The condition of the sale is needed, the FTC believed, because the original deal would have left WD as one of just two global desktop hard drive makers. The FTC ruled the deal as uncompetitive and feels its ruling will maintain "vigorous competition" in the worldwide market that should result in competitive prices and innovation in the field.
Today's deals from DealNN include price breaks on hard drives, headsets, and more. Onsale.com has recently lowered the cost of the refurbished Seagate 1.5TB GoFlex Portable Hard Drive, complete with both Mac and PC compatibility, plug-and-play support, and an upgradeable USB 2.0 interface. Currently featured at DealNN, this hard drive has now dropped $80 in price and can be purchased for only $119.99.
Storage drive maker Seagate has updated its previous outlook on hard drive shortages due to the floods in Thailand. During its latest results call, it said shipments will be affected well into 2012, and the total shortage is to reach about 150 million units. Another storage drive maker, Western Digital, has stated production volumes won't be resumed until the summer.
Seagate has quietly updated its accessory page with a GoFlex Thunderbolt adapter. The add-on now lets any of Seagate's mobile GoFlex drives use the 10Gbps interface on a Mac or upcoming PCs. The storage designers claim that it's about 20 times faster than USB 2.0, although only if the drive itself can maximize the bus speed.
Seagate has teamed with Verizon to demonstrate 4G LTE integrated into a Seagate Mobile Wireless Storage device (not yet pictured) for use with smartphones and tablets. The unit can download music, movies and photos without needing another host network. It can then stream the stored content using Wi-Fi to up to three devices.
Hard drive maker Seagate has completed its buyout of Samsung's hard disk drive business first announced back in April. Seagate will take over Samsung's M8 product line of high-capacity, 2.5-inch drives and employees such as senior managers, designers and engineers from Samsung's Korean plant. They will continue to focus on small form-factor drives for notebooks and similarly small ahrdware.
Late last week, Seagate cut the warranty period for many of its popular hard drives. Western Digital (WD) has now followed suit. In some cases, the length of time has been cut from five years to one.
Seagate started off Tuesday by shipping its second-generation Momentus XT hybrid drive for notebooks. The upgrade is estimated to be about 70 percent faster than the earlier Momentus even as it goes to 750GB of internal storage. As before, the key is the inclusion of a 8GB solid-state drive, which here is twice as fast as before and should both cache and load much faster.
Seagate in an update warned that hard drive shortages relating to Thai flooding would last for the long term. It anticipated that shortages would go on for "several quarters." Although supply would improve in 2012, some PC builders would "optimize" by using fewer drives or models with lower capacity.
Today's deals from DealNN include price breaks on storage systems, laptops and more. Staples.com is definately doing its best to contribute to the flood of Black Friday deals, and as a result has dropped the price of the Seagate GoFlex 2TB Home Network Storage System, complete with two year limited warranty and wireless file-sharing support. Currently featured at DealNN, this model has now dropped $90 in price and can be purchased for only $129.99.
Western Digital has revealed that on Friday an arbitrator ruled against the company in a dispute between itself and rival Seagate over alleged misappropriation of confidential information and trade secrets. The preliminary award is for $525 million, not including any prejudgement interest. WD plans on challenging the award.
Japan's Nidec gave some hope to a quicker end to Thai flood-related drive shortages after it stated Monday that it had already resumed making hard drive motors in its factories in Ayutthaya. The company is responsible for making nearly 75 percent of the drive motors in the world and could ease production supplies at companies like Seagate, which are indirectly affected. Production in mainland China and the Philippines was also increasing and could help mitigate other losses, to the point where it was making 100 million motors just in the next quarter.
Seagate on Tuesday cut down its Barracuda desktop hard drives to just one core model line in what may be as much a supply issue as simplification. It will drop both the Barracuda Green and XT lines and fold some of their features into the main series, with performance features like SmartAlign (4K data block) formatting and hybrid SSD/hard drive models simply showing up in the regular line. Storage will start at 250GB and peak at the previous 3TB.
Seagate and Western Digital both warned late this week that continued flooding in Thailand was worsening shortages. Western Digital has been the worst affected and anticipated a major hit to supply of its hard drives made in the country. Seagate's main plants were unaffected so far, but many of the smaller companies supplying parts were temporarily shut down, the company said.
Sony has warned that it has delayed indefinitely the introduction of two of its latest cameras as a result of recent flooding in Thailand. The company has been forced to shut down two of its three production units in the country, including those that had been preparing to roll out the new NEX-7 and Alpha A65 cameras. A worldwide shortage of hard drives as well is expected in the aftermath of the flooding.
Seagate staked out a first for itself in shipping a 4TB version of the GoFlex Desk. The external drive is touted as the first of its kind hitting the capacity and comes with a new design that reduces the practical size of the drive on the desk. It supports USB 3.0 with a bundled adapter for the GoFlex system, which can also jump to eSATA, FireWire 800, or other connectors as they're needed.
Seagate on Monday added a high-performance portable hard drive with a rare offer of special support. The GoFlex Turbo brings in-box USB 3.0 support and has a 2.5-inch, 7,200RPM drive to make better use of the faster port. As a GoFlex drive, other adapters can support eSATA or FireWire 800.
Seagate has given Android users a chance at its GoFlex Satellite Wi-Fi hard drive with a new app (free, Android Market). Both smartphone and tablet owners can now get the same locla media sharing features from the drive that iOS users have had since May, whether playing music, photos, and videos or else opening general files. As before, users just need to be within Wi-Fi range of the drive, not the Internet.
Apple is offering a free replacement for a "very small" number of 1TB Seagate drives used in 21.5- and 27-inch iMacs sold between May and July of this year, the company notes. The drives can be replaced free of charge by bringing the unit in to an Apple Retail Store, Authorized Service Provider or other options. Apple has set up a webpage for users to enter their iMac serial number to determine if they qualify for the program.
Archos took its turn at entering the full Android tablet category Thursday with the formal unveiling of its ninth-generation slates. The eight-inch and 10-inch 80 G9 and 101 G9 will both run Android 3.1 from the start and are unique in depending on spinning hard drives rather than flash. Either uses Seagate's Momentus Thin drives to fit as much as 250GB of storage.
Today's deals from DealNN include price breaks on hard drives, power supplies, and more. Macmall.com has recently lowered the cost of the refurbished Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 320GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive, which features the Seagate Dashboard management tool, powerful encryption software, and a 90 day warranty for both parts and labor. Currently featured at DealNN, this hard drive has recently dropped from $79.99 down to only $36.99, and offers savings of up to $43.
Seagate's plans for a rare truly cable-free hard drive were uncovered through an FCC filing this week. Its GoFlex Satellite would have not just 802.11n Wi-Fi to serve storage on the local network but would have its own battery to operate completely cable-free for hours. An iOS app, GoFlex Media, would let iPad, iPhone, and iPod owners stream music or videos directly from the drive, presumably as a way of giving access to a much larger media library while travelling.
Seagate on Tuesday brought out a world-first hard drive for storage density. The 3.5-inch drive breaks the 1TB per platter barrier and will first be available in the company's GoFlex Desk external drives. The drive has an areal density of 625 gigabits (78.13GB) per square inch, which is the highest in the industry.
Samsung and Seagate on Tuesday lived up to last-minute rumors by forging a deal for their storage businesses. Under the terms, Samsung will fold its hard drive business into Seagate's while Seagate will in turn give Samsung drives for computers and other devices. Samsung will bring its flash memory into play and feed not just Seagate's enterprise solid-state drives but also hybrid drives and "other products."
A source claimed Sunday night that Samsung was looking to sell off its hard drive business. The Korean company had set a target price of $1.5 billion but was eager enough to sell it for under $1 billion if it couldn't fetch the intended target. Seagate was the only named candidate from the Wall Street Journal's tip, but it wasn't clear how likely the US company was to land the deal.
Seagate fulfilled one of its CES promises on Tuesday and shipped the GoFlex Slim. The 320GB disk earns its name from an extremely minimalist shell that leads to a 9mm (0.35in) height about as thick as a pencil. In spite of the size, speed is a major factor and is helped along by a 7,200RPM spin speed and out-of-the-box USB 3.0 support, the combination of which can transfer at up to 40MB per second.
Seagate on Tuesday morning put out four pro drives targeted at both enterprise users and serious users, including a near record-setting SSD. The Pulsar.2 is billed as the first SSD using multi-level cell (MLC) in business and uses the denser storage to boost capacity, but without reducing its lifespan. It can hold as much as 800GB in its 2.5-inch form but can take as many as 15 petabytes of writes, or more than five years if its drive were completely rewritten 10 times every day.
Samsung has found a way to build 1TB platters for hard drives, which will allow it to build 4TB hard drives for computers. The news came from CeBIT courtesy of German newspaper Heise and indicates a new record. Currently, companies can only produce 3TB 3.5-inch hard drives, with each platter at 750MB. The breakthrough also applies to notebooks, as Samsung showed off a 2.5-inch, two-platter, 1TB drive that is compatible with most average notebooks thanks to its standard height.
Western Digital said on Monday that it was buying Hitachi Global Storage Technologies for the equivalent of $4.3 billion. The move includes a combination of $3.5 billion in cash as well as shares worth about $750 million. The deal will see the WD name remain but see Hitachi GST's CEO Steve Milligan join WD as president.
Introduced in the fall, Seagate has now began shipping its 3TB Barracuda XT internal hard drive. The highest capacity hard drive is rare in supporting legacy operating systems such as Windows XP, which can't normally support hard drive capacities higher than 2.1TB. DiscWizard software that's available for download ships with the drive and lets the system read and write to, though not boot from, the extra-large drive.
Seagate has made an iOS companion TV Remote app available on the iTunes App Store for its GoFlex TV and FreeAgent Theater+ HD. The app allows users to remotely control their Seagate devices over Wi-Fi so that they can use it anywhere around the house. When launching it for the first time, the app will automatically scan a user’s Wi-Fi network for available devices.
Seagate has reported a significant drop in profits, which slid by 72 percent in the recent quarter. The lackluster performance was blamed on weaker-than-expected demand in the consumer computer segment. The rising popularity of flash-based storage is also said to be a minor factor contributing to the slump in HDD sales.
Seagate on Tuesday hoped to claim the distinction of having the fastest eco-friendly hard drive available by shipping the Barracuda Green. Formerly known as the Barracuda LP, the drive turns at 5,900RPM versus the 5,200RPM or 5,400RPM of most other disks while still reducing the power consumption. The 3.5-inch unit is simultaneously environmentally friendly in its actual materials, as it has low use of halogen and is up to 70 percent recyclable.
Seagate has just introduced its second-generation Constellation.2 family of enterprise hard drives with a 2.5-inch form factor. Made for use in data centers, they now reach up to 1TB and offer highest capacity in their size and have the lowest power consumption in the class. The choice of interface is equally diverse with either a 6Gbps SAS or same-speed SATA connection.
Seagate reportedly turned down buyout offers from rival hard-drive maker Western Digital, according to a Bloomberg report. Sources familiar with the matter claim Western Digital offered to pay somewhere between 10 percent and 50 percent more than TPG, a company which had already offered more than $7.5 billion in an unsuccessful bid.
Seagate chief Steve Luczo talked down the effect of the new MacBook Air's all-SSD mix this week in a question and answer session following its latest results. He acknowledged that the designs would be "obviously pretty competing" but noted that SSDs were still in the minority at Apple, which he estimated sold just five percent or less of its Macs with flash storage. He also reiterated common problems with SSDs, such as their high prices, low capacities and tendency to bog down over time as they fill up and lose efficiency.
Seagate and WD will soon release the first 3TB internal hard drives on the market, says Dutch site Hardware.info. Images of the drives have surfaced, with European online retailers listing them for pre-orders as well. The 3.5-inch drives are called the Seagate Barracuda XT and Western Digital Caviar Green.
Seagate this morning reached another record for storage with a 1.5TB version of the FreeAgent GoFlex Ultra-portable drive. The disk is the first 2.5-inch drive to reach the density and still claims a possible edge in speed. It ships with a USB 3.0 cable that gives it a theoretical 5Gbps peak speed, and as a GoFlex drive it can switch to FireWire 800 or another high-speed format.
Cisco tonight unveiled a new slate of Flip cameras that promise a major lift in video quality. The Flip Ultra HD 2 hour and both 1 hour (4GB) and 2 hour (8GB) versions of the Flip Mino HD now shoot 720p video at 60 frames per second, improving their ability to handle motion and the perceived clarity. A gyroscopic image stabilization system is also new and prevents many of the more sudden jitters common to a pocket camcorder.
Seagate has been synonymous with storage for decades, but it has often followed a relatively conservative path. GoFlex changes that; it promises to keep external hard drives almost futureproof by making the ports as removable as the drives themselves. With that in mind, we've made a comprehensive review of the main GoFlex lineup, including the GoFlex TV media hub, GoFlex Net network-attached storage hub, and the range-topping 3TB GoFlex Desk external drive.
Gefen has launched its GefenTV Home Theater Audio Processor and optional five-set, wall-mountable speakers. The Audio Processor comes with a variety of digital and analog audio connections, allows users to select the best sound delivery for their particular entertainment system. Along the back of the device users will find six analog RCA outputs that support 5.1 Dolby surround sound and can connect to any amplifier.
Seagate dipped into the world of simple network-attached storage by launching the GoFlex Home. The drive potentially avoids the common problems with future upgrades by using its own GoFlex system for the storage: the NAS has a modular base that takes any single disk, desktop-sized GoFlex drive for a swap up in capacity without having to replace the drive or open a bay door. Trumping some drives, the Home has its own Wi-Fi and doesn't need to be plugged in solely through Ethernet.
Seagate has brought out a new version of its network storage server for small business and home use, the BlackArmor NAS 400. The NAS has four bays and can accommodate 3.5-inch drives. There are two gigabit Ethernet ports and four USB 2.0 connections for connecting additional drives or printers.
Seagate claimed a record in storage today by launching a 3TB FreeAgent GoFlex Desk drive. The first of its kind packs a single, 3TB disk inside and is large enough to need a 64-bit OS to work: it needs either Mac OS X Snow Leopard and either Windows 7 or Vista in their 64-bit versions to see more than the 2.1TB inherent to drives on most 32-bit platforms. Windows XP may not be usable at all.
Seagate today validated its teasers by revealing the Momentus XT. The drive is conceived as the best of both worlds for notebooks and includes both a traditional 2.5-inch, 7,200RPM hard drive with a 4GB, SLC-based solid-state drive and 32MB of DDR3 memory as a cache. Special firmware on the drive uses the SSD to optimize performance; it should boot almost as fast as a pure SSD and load about 80 percent faster than a regular 7,200RPM drive.
Seagate has launched a teaser page for an upcoming storage product that is claimed to boost system performance by up to 150 percent. It is claimed to "learn about its user" to decrease disk time, boot time, and load times. Seagate has partnered with ASUS to take one of the latter company's gaming systems "to another level."
