Quick Test: Seagate's 1TB Portable FreeAgent Go

The season of the 1TB bus-powered USB drive is upon us. WD was first; now Seagate is shipping the FreeAgent Go, a chunky SOB—three platters worth of storage powered and connected by one skinny cable. More »

Silver Circuit Goo For Thinner Gadgets

The NYTimes has a post on Vertical Circuits, a company that has developed a 3d circuit stacking technology using a silver based epoxy—goo, basically—to closer fuse flash memory chips together. More »

Seagate Barracuda LP Green Hard Drive Slooooows Down to Save Power

There's a general rule with hard drives: spin faster, get better performance, use more power. "Green" hard drives take the opposite tack: they spin slower, and use less power, like Seagate's new Barracuda LP. More »

Seagate's BlackArmor NAS 420/440 Can Securely Contain Up to 8TB of Encrypted Data for Small Businesses

What do the San Jose Sharks' new jerseys and Seagate's new hard drives have in common? They are both named BlackArmor, which are eponymous to Seagate's new 8TB network-attached storage (NAS) systems. More »

Seagate's SATA3 Is Twice as Fast As Current Hard Drives

Right now, you're probably working on a SATA-based hard drive, with a transfer speed of 150MBps (SATA) or 300MBps (SATA2). Meanwhile, Seagate just demonstrated their tentative SATA3 spec, which reaches speeds of 600Mbps. More »

Seagate's FreeAgent Theater HD Media Player Is a Set-Top Dock for Hard Drives

Last night, I previewed Seagate's FreeAgent Theater HD Media Player, which docks those super-slim FreeAgent 2.5" USB drives in order to connect your video files to your TV. More »

Seagate Fires Back with 2TB Constellation Drive

Western Digital may have announced the world's first 2TB 3.5" hard drive last week, but this week, Seagate fired back with a 2TB model of their own. More »

Seagate Firmware Fix Turned Barracudas into Paperweights

Seagate's SD1A firmware update, meant to fix problems with its Barracuda 7200.11 models, only managed to make things worse—bricking the drives of those who bothered to install it. They've pulled the update pending validation. More »

Seagate Reverses Course, Offers Free Data Recovery for Borked Barracuda Hard Drives

Seagate's tone has softened since sites started reporting on the plague striking down its Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives. They're not deleting threads anymore and are offering free data recovery services. More »

1TB Seagate Barracudas Collapsing A Gogo, Users Say

It looks like the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive series is having serious problems Zune style, with a large number of them failing like crazy, specially the 1TB model. The problem seems to be firmware-based. More »

Seagate's 'Computer Friends' Really Want You to Invest in 1.5 Terabytes of Storage

Historically, nerd rap has been attached to the Aesop Rocks, Lupe Fiascos, and Kool Keiths of the world, but with this recent trend of viral-y, tech related hip hop vids (See: Large Hadron Rap), that classification is taking on an entirely new meaning altogether. Case in point, Seagate's "Computer Friends" video, which pairs a couple of ironically wiggeriffic cubical emcees together with their token black co-worker (for a ghetto pass, presumably) to spit a hot 16 about their beloved computers, and the need for more storage, specifically a 1.5TB HDD. However, I still think your money would be better spent on an SSD. More »

Seagate Won't Do Flash SSDs, Waiting For Next-Gen Tech

Just last month we were reporting "Seagate to begin to switch to SSD" and now company CEO Bill Watkins has said that that's not quite the truth. Seagate will indeed be launching an enterprise-level SSD in 2009, but will not enter the "mobile SSD" market. Whyever not? Because there's no money to be made there: "Right now if you look at it whether it's Micron or Samsung or SanDisk - they're selling at a loss. To do the product is not a big deal but to make money at it - it's important to us." he notes. Instead the company is banking on post MLC technology, something like "a spin around magnetic RAM, it could be a phase shift type of process" says Watkins. Seagate hard drives might be around for a while longer. [Silicon via MRAM-info]

Seagate to Begin Switch to SSD

Seagate has decided to enter the solid-state disk (SSD) market in 2009, starting the company's switch from hard disk drives (HDD). Their first target: corporate America. Once they've got the cubicle commanders, they'll move to consumers. Seagate senior manager Rich Vignes seems to be awfully defensive about this move, stating over and over that they'll take it slow. Of course, if you're reading Giz, chances are your response to the announcement is "Duh." To be clear, Seagate isn't abandoning HDDs: there will still be segments of the market better suited for hard drives rather than SSDs, and this switch to SSD as the breadwinner of the company won't happen for a long time. [CNet]

Dealzmodo: 500GB Seagate Hard Drive for $50

Today's woot! is a factory-refurbished 500GB Seagate Barracuda hard drive, running at 7200 rpm with a 16MB buffer, for only $50. I know, I know, refurbs are risky, but for a backup drive you only use every once in awhile, this is a great price and should do you just fine. [woot!]

1.5TB FreeAgent XTreme Anchors Onslaught of Stylish Seagate Hard Drives

That there is the grandpappy of those leaked Seagate hard drives, the 3.5-inch, 7200RPM, 1.5TB FreeAgent XTreme. It connects via USB 2.0, FireWire 400 or eSATA, the latter of which transfers files at a blazing 3GBit/second. Available in October, the $300 LED-filled drive comes in three more sizes starting at $160 for 500GB. Seagate launched a whole slew of other HDDs too, including 5400RPMers, 2.5" slim drives in four colors and two Mac-ready drives that'll save you the inconvenience of running Disk Utility for $40-$70 more than their PC-counterparts. Catch 'em in pics and press release down below. More »

Leaked Seagate FreeAgent Drives Might Actually Be Worth Leaking

It's pretty rare that we run leaked shots of external hard drives, but these next gen FreeAgent drives by Seagate are almost stylish. (I mean, let's admit it, most of this stuff will look horrible to our kids.) All we know right now is that the models will include 5400 and 7200RPM drives that will eventually come in loads of colors (starting with this silver, but moving to pink, red, green and gold). And at least one model will be Mac-ready out of the box. Our only point of confusion—is that a glowing LED pattern on the front? Look for more on the new models this September. [engadget]

Maxtor Central Axis 1TB NAS is Monolithic, Family Friendly

Maxtor just released their Maxtor Central AXIS 7200 RPM NAS, which offers 1TB of storage, DLNA Compliance, and an HTTP-based interface that allows for multi-user remote access with admin and guest privileges. Since the interface is an HTTP-based app, it works with any platform with a web browser, and the DLNA compliance means you can send photos, video and music to devices like Xbox 360, PS3 and countless televisions. Expect the Maxtor Central Axis to hit stores in July for $330. More »

Question of the Day: Which Hard Drives Have Crashed On You?

Today when I wrote up a WD RAID drive, the comment boxes were flooded with WD gripes. The funny thing is, the reverse happened when we wrote about Seagate a while ago. And Buchanan won't shut up about Hitachi's infamous "Death Star" drives. Are all drives equally prone to fail, or are there some makers who get it right more often than others? Yes, we would like you to share your most heart-wrenching drive crash stories, if you've finally got up the courage to talk about it. But first: More »

Dell First to Offer 7200rpm 320GB Notebook Hard Drives

While a flood of 7200rpm 320GB notebook-sized hard drives dropped not too long ago from pretty much all the majors, Dell is actually the first notebook maker to ante up and offer them (from Seagate) in their 17-inch XPS notebooks. The ballyhoo is 'cause most notebook drives spin at a pokey 5400rpm, and if you wanted the extra performance of a 7200rpm drive, you had to skimp on capacity. Now for $50 more (vs. a 5400rpm 320GB drive), you don't. Expect them in Alienware stuff soonish. [Dell via Crave]

Seagate Showcase 1TB DVR Extender Records 12 HD Streams at Once (Now You Just Need 12 CableCards)

Seagate is taking their first crack at external DVR storage with the Showcase line of HDDs. The Showcase drives range in size from 250GB to 1TB, work with both eSATA and USB connections, and can record a whopping 12 HD streams simultaneously. For now, Motorola cable boxes are the only ones compatible with the Showcase, so TiVo owners and others should hold off until we hear more. They'll be on sale this fall, full release after the jump. [Seagate] More »

Charred Hard Drive from Space Shuttle Columbia Recovered (Best Data Rescue Ever?)

It's taken four and a half years, but the data recovery specialists charged with extracting data from a cracked, charred 400MB Seagate drive aboard the ill-fated Space Shuttle Columbia have done their duty, retrieving 99% of the information written to the disk. The Columbia burned up on re-entry on Feb. 1, 2003, over Louisiana and Texas. Computerworld reports that the drive was found in a dry lakebed and handed to a team at Kroll Ontrack about six months after the tragedy, but the successful recovery has only just come to light. So, you ask, what was on the drive that was so important? More »

Staples Offers Seagate Data Recovery Service in all Stores

According to Informationweek and Computerworld, Segate has inked a deal with Staples that will bring data recovery services to all of the retail chain's 1400 stores. The deal will allow users to reclaim their lost data from any type of digital media, regardless of brand or condition. After a free evaluation, the experts will determine whether or not the data can be salvaged and what fee should be charged for its recovery. More »

SentrySafe Fireproof Waterproof USB HDD Housings Save Your Data (Not You) From Armageddon

SentrySafe has made safes for 70 years, but now they've teamed with Seagate/Maxtor to make hard-drive housings that withstand up to 1550degrees Fahrenheit for a half hour, and "full" 24-hour water submersion. Some like the Fire-Safe/Waterproof 80GB and 160GB ($320) drives are freestanding units that house 2.5" bus-powered drives in impervious containers. The other alternative is a full-blown $520 safe that has a USB pass-through for your bus-powered drive. A third option is a smaller filing box, the Data Storage Safe, which lets you keep DVDs and other small documents along with a small USB drive. [SentrySafe] More »