We don't have details as to exactly how much these drives will cost or when we'll be seeing them in our computers, but we do know that they're shipping to Seagate's OEM and integrator partners at the very beginning of 2010. If the Momentus Thin lives up to all its claims, then its 160GB and 250GB capacities should be a rather attractive option for netbooks. Definitely something to keep an eye on next year.

SEAGATE UNVEILS WORLD'S THINNEST 2.5-INCH HARD DRIVE FOR SLIM LAPTOP COMPUTERS

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. - December 14, 2009 - Seagate Technology (NASDAQ:STX) today announced the Momentus® Thin drive, the world's thinnest 2.5-inch hard disk drive for ultra-portable and entry-level laptops, high-end netbooks, backup devices and consumer electronics. At a wafer-thin 7mm in height – 25 percent slimmer than traditional 9.5mm 2.5-inch laptop hard drives – the Momentus Thin drive gives original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and system integrators significantly lower cost-per-gigabyte storage than solid state and 1.8-inch drives, enabling a new breed of entry-level thin laptops.

Of all netbook computers available today, 90 percent feature 9.5mm 2.5-inch laptop drives because solid state and 1.8-inch hard drives are largely cost-prohibitive for this market. The Momentus Thin drive provides the lowest-cost storage for netbooks and thin laptops, enabling computer makers to offer systems that reach a broader market.

"The Momentus® Thin drive promises to help computer makers differentiate on mobile-computing form factor and better compete in the fast-growing markets for thin laptop PCs and netbooks," said Dave Mosley, executive vice president of Sales, Marketing and Product Line Management at Seagate. "Seagate is committed to helping its OEM and system integrator partners meet market demand for thinner laptop PCs and plans to expand storage capabilities for thin laptops as demand for these slimmer models continues to grow."

The Momentus Thin drive rivals traditional 2.5-inch laptop drives in performance and power-efficiency, enabling thin-chassis designs in all segments of notebook computing and allowing OEMs both to design in greater value on high-end netbooks for easier upselling and to create a wider value differentiation between consumer and commercial laptop PCs. The Momentus Thin drive features two capacity points – 250GB and 160GB – an 8MB cache, a Serial ATA 3Gb/second interface and a 5400RPM spin speed. The drive is scheduled to ship to Seagate's OEM and integrator partners in January 2010.

The Seagate® Momentus® family now helps laptop makers give home and business users a sweeping upgrade path – from netbooks, often purchased as introductory, low-cost laptop PCs strictly for emailing and Internet surfing, to notebooks offering mainstream business and consumer applications, to feature-rich, high-performance laptops, all in standard-size and the increasingly popular thin models. Seagate Momentus 5400RPM and 7200RPM hard drives in the traditional 9.5mm height combine the industry's broadest feature set – including self-encryption, FIPS 140-2 certification and free-fall sensors – with up to 640GB of capacity, fast 3Gb/second Serial ATA interface speeds, cache sizes as large as 16MB, and among the highest hard drive shock-tolerance, acoustics and reliability specifications for entry-level, mainstream and high-performance laptops.

[Seagate]

The Pulsar drives are all 3Gb/s SATA compatible, offering top read/write speeds of 240MB/s and 220MB/s, respectively. For comparison, the current market champ, Intel's X25-M, hits 250MB/s read but only 100MB/s write, and the X25-M tops out at 160GB capacity. These new Seagate drives have a lifespan of about five years, which is about average for current-gen SSDs. The Pulsars began shipping to OEMs in September, so we should start seeing them pretty soon—right now, we don't have individual prices for them, although if Intel's X25-M's prices are any indication, they won't be cheap. [Seagate]

The Old Champs

If you remember the HD media player battlemodo, I awarded WDTV Live and Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ the two top spots. The WD is still best for people who want a smooth interface and a hopefully increasing number of online services for streamed media. (YouTube and Pandora now, who knows what else?) It's actually the Seagate that gets KO'd by Asus.

The New Buttkicker

More functional than frilly, both the O!Play and the Theater+ handle every video file I could throw their way, they both read Mac- and PC-formatted drives, they both browse the local network well, they both read DVD menus from ripped ISO files, they both have superb video output—and they both suffer from having stupid punctuation characters in their name. But one costs $30 less than the other, according to Amazon's current prices. Not only is the O!Play cheaper, but its second USB jack is also an eSATA port which might come in handy when you start getting 1080p rips of all your favorite movies, and it has a file-copy function that lets you dump stuff from one drive to another, or to drives on the network.

I had only one major complaint with the Asus: Every time I watched a video ripped from DVD, it showed chapter numbers in a big white font for an extended period, about 15 seconds. Not only did pushing every single button I could think of not help this, but I couldn't even advance from one chapter to another by using the skip-forward button, so why do I need to know what chapter it is in the first place? A shame, but probably a bug that can be fixed really easily.

The Final Score

As I said in the battlemodo:

• If you want a full-on pirate kit, with torrent client built-in and everything, go with the Popcorn Hour (or the cheaper, quirky Patriot Box Office).
• If you want something with a nice interface and Pandora streaming music, go with WDTV.
• If you're choosing something to work with your iTunes collection of music and video, or something for your parents, probably still better to pick Apple TV—and tell them to buy or rent all their videos.

But if you want something that can play a ton of home-ripped video, or stuff you've acquired in some other high-bandwidth way, Asus is a better deal than Seagate—just as tough to stump in my battery of file format tests, with a few extra nice features. That's my best and final recommendation for HD video file playback—at least until Roku figures out what the USB jack on the HD-XR is really for. [Asus]

Great price for a high-def HDMI video player

Plays every video file I could throw at it, including DivX 7 MKVs, high-def H.264, even obscure home movies from out-of-date cameras

A bit larger than some products out there, but not by much

No streaming internet services

Annoying bug that shows chapter numbers in a large white font as you watch movies ripped from DVD

The goal here is simple: Play all the videos that I have ripped from DVD, downloaded from the web, shot with my own cameras or obtained in some other manner, no matter what the format. It sounds simple, but Apple TV can't do it. Neither can the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. Video codecs and containers are a nightmare to keep track of, and even more of a nightmare to convert.

This isn't about photos and music. Apple TV is better at both of those than any of this stuff. It's also not about renting movies or buying movies, or even streaming movies from Netflix. Roku has a nice cheap box for that, and Apple TV is suitable if you just want to live inside Steve Jobs' media store. This is about playing non-DRM movies, pure and simple.

The names might be familiar to you: The Popcorn Hour C-200 by Syabas is quickly gaining cult status (and has its own hacker wiki), while the other four smaller boxes come from brands you probably have experience with, including WD, Seagate, Netgear and Patriot. None have built-in wireless, but they all have Ethernet ports.

My two main tests were simple—I loaded PC and Mac formatted external hard drives with a variety of files ranging from H.264 MP4s to WMVs of several vintages, from raw AVCHD files in MTS wrappers to the hot new DivX 7 MKV. Then I browsed through my local network to a NAS that had a cache of similar files. Could I see them? Could I play them? These shouldn't be issues, but they're big issues.

Here's a rundown of each machine, and how they fared in testing:

As you can see, there were clear leaders given my criteria above, but what struck me was how each one differed. Truth is, depending on who you are, any one of these might be the best fit. Here's what really separates them:

WD TV Live - $150

I would have given this thing the solo spot at the top if it weren't for a few dings that might very well be fixed in a firmware update: It won't show you DVD menus on ripped DVD images, and when you play files with the suffix .m4v, it won't fast forward or rewind. Weird bug, and can be fixed if you just change .m4v to .mp4, but since that's the default file naming for Handbrake's "Apple TV" profile, it could be a problem for people, like me, who spent months ripping their entire DVD collection that way.

WD's strengths include a friendly user interface with handy video previews, some promising early online services (including Pandora), and the most reasonable photo and music handling I've seen in this cluster of gadgets.

Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ - $150

I loved this when I tested it a few weeks ago, despite its fugly interface, and it holds up under testing. It does better with ripped .ISO files than WD, doing both DVD menus and chapters (and it doesn't have that weird .m4v bug either). Video was better, especially when running 1080p content. And when it came to browsing my Linksys NAS in search of movies, it could reach more and read more than the WD.

The tradeoff is that the interface is bad, and there's almost nothing in the way of online services. It gets points for making an attempt at sorting music, and displaying photos, but if that's a priority, WD is the better call.

Popcorn Hour C-200 - $300

Hardcore AV nerds love this thing, and I understand why. There are more ways to get at video content than in any other set-top box I've ever seen, and if you really know how to hack, there's really not much it can't do.

It's a big ole thing—they call it a "network tank," and despite remind me of the far cooler ones in Tron, I get it. It has an internal BitTorrent client and you can plug in a Blu-ray drive, for God's sake. I found very few video formats that it wouldn't support (FLV was one) but I had to take major points off because for being so big, it has a lame interface, and it comes with an RF remote that only worked when I stood within 3 feet. They even mention that there might be problems with interference, and that if people experience that, they can buy the IR remote. Great, thanks.

My only question—and, commenters, it's not rhetorical—is why spend $300 on this (plus extra for the optional internal HDD and the IR remote) when you can just buy a home-theater PC?

Patriot Box Office - $130

This was the dark horse of the group, being a late entry by a company known only for computer memory. I was surprised at how well it held up. It actually could decode more tested formats than any other device in this lineup—it did Flash video (FLV), which the three above can't render. Only the WD and the Patriot show you video previews, too. As small as it is, there's a space for a 2.5" SATA drive in there, and even a BitTorrent client. You can copy files to and from different drives and the network, and it's the cheapest of the lot, at $130.

So why did it come in a distant 3rd? Unlike the three above, it can't read Mac formatted hard drives, and its video quality was noticeably the worst of the batch. That said, if you are a hacker sort and want something to play with that doesn't cost as much as Popcorn, set your sights on this.

Netgear Digital Entertainer Live

As you can probably tell by now, Netgear had the most disappointing box of the lineup, despite its Apple TV ripoff of a look and feel. Lack of Mac media support and the inability to read key file formats, like DivX 7 and AVCHD, meant it couldn't pass muster with real video fanatics. Its biggest point of woe was the fact that it didn't support any file over 720p in resolution—whether that's a software thing or a hardware thing, it's sure not future-proof, and probably best to stay away.

I also didn't like the fact that its interface is laid out entirely for retail, like an Apple TV without the panache, or a Roku box that costs more and doesn't do Netflix. Local files were not a priority, and despite the friendly interface, it doesn't even make an attempt to differentiate photos and music. I did give it a gold star for online services, but only because it had the most in this group—if online services are what you love, buy a Roku, or a TiVo, or an Xbox, or a friggin' Apple TV.

Still not sure what you're looking for, check the spec comparisons here:

Update: At the urging of many readers, I recently tested the Asus O!Play and found that it does all of the things the Seagate can do (except fit Seagate-branded FreeAgent drives inside), but at a lower cost—$100 vs $130 in today's pricing. If you have narrowed your options down to the Seagate, skip over to my Asus O!Play review before making your final decision.

The good news is that these things work well, despite the larger drive and lower power. They're not about performance—5400 rpm only—but when I tested moving a 1GB file to and from, I got it in under 30 seconds, just a hair slower than the same file moved to and from faster FireWire 800 drives. I didn't do any real benchmarking, but I am convinced that the USB is going to be the bottleneck, not the bigger drive (shown below with a 320GB USB-only and a 500GB FW800/USB combo). The FreeAgent was even designed to fit the USB dock and FreeAgent Theater+, though not subtly.

That brings us to the bad news, which many of you already know: Despite being portable bus-powered 2.5" drives, the three-platter HDDs inside these casings are not capable of being ripped out and stuck into your laptop, at least, not without some hackery I am not qualified to endorse. So, in lieu of a full review, I offer this: It works, it's not noticeably sluggish given the added weight, and it feels really good to be able to carry a whole terabyte wherever I want. [Seagate]

The Price

$150 without drive; $290 with 500GB drive included.

The Praise

As I mentioned, the video decoding on this is better than anything I've ever seen in a $150 box. The Theater+ is very comfortable with HD video, not only because of its HDMI output but because when I dumped some QuickTime 1080p movie trailers on a drive and docked it, the trailers played back without a single hiccup. Ditto for high-def MKVs I downloaded from the DivX 7 showcase. If you encoded a video with subtitles or variable audio tracks, the choice appears up when you hit the menu button during playback. And disc images of DVDs? It's like there's a real live DVD in there, only there isn't!

Some more coolness: It remembers where you are in a movie, so you don't have to worry about stopping then coming back and having to find your place, even when you're viewing a DVD image. And since it's connected, it can hop on your NAS drives to pick up movies and other files. Again, no problems playing back. (Note: I didn't try the wireless option, which will sell separately for $70 later on—I used Ethernet through a Linksys powerline adapter).

The chart of accepted video codecs is long, but unlike most players of this price range, there are very few fine-print exceptions. What can't you play? Very very low-rez (viral) WMVs got the ix-nay—higher rez WMVs play just fine. What else? DVD disc images in the .img format don't show up, but switching a .img to the supported .iso is surprisingly easy. That's it. It didn't brick any other assorted video in my library, out of hundreds of files.

The Scorn

I won't lie, the interface on this baby is pretty heinous. It's media manager circa 2002, which means that I would expressly stay away from photos and music, despite its ability to read any of those files too. Movies are good because you don't need a lot of browsing—I just switched it from the ridiculously blocky "thumbnail" view to a standard list view, and skimmed my movies in alphabetical order. The good news is, you can change filenames to make it look a little prettier: dont_tempt_me.m4v becomes Don't Tempt Me.m4v.

I also wouldn't bother with Seagate's media manager software for "syncing" content to the hard drive. Maybe run it once for it to set up a folder structure on your drive, then copy video files over to it to your heart's content. You don't even have to use a FreeAgent Go drive, though it looks nice, nestled in there. You can plug just about any drive (NTFS, HFS+ or FAT are all fine, format wise) into a USB port, and navigate to it through the "devices" list.

As I mentioned, this is a networked device, but the internet options are as of now pretty lame: A non-personalized Flickr feed, a Picasa widget, a stock ticker and a weather program, all of which are bargain basement plug-ins. Call me when Netflix and Pandora arrive.

The Verdict

What do I personally want? A basic video player that can read the 150 to 200 DVDs I ripped in H.264 to save space, plus all of the crap that Apple TV and the lesser media adapters seem to have a problem with. Video should be either local or on a NAS, and I shouldn't have to worry about codecs or resolutions or any of the crap others seem to freak out about. I don't need help with music or photos—it's strictly about movies and longer-form TV. Because of that, I am a fan of this little box. Once it starts shipping, I encourage you to check it out. Just heed the following rules:

• Don't buy the 500GB drive bundle for $290—Amazon sells the 500GB FreeAgent Go right now for $106, so there's no way the bundle makes sense (as currently priced).
• And don't accidentally go buying the old FreeAgent Theater. It's my understanding that the first go 'round wasn't so pretty. From the looks of this massive overhaul, Seagate probably should have done more than just add a plus sign. [Product page; Amazon sales page]

In Brief

Decoded every video I selected, with two extremely negotiable exceptions

Compatible with Mac and PC formatted drives, and has no issues with folder hierarchies

HD, HD and more HD—720p and 1080p look good and play back smoothly

No problem locating NAS drives on the network, and no hiccups in playing back DVD disc images over the network

Internet widgets at present are dumb, but a future firmware update could bring something nice

The user interface is pretty ugly—your best bet is to clump your videos together into easy folders (Movies, TV, etc.) and to avoid using this to manage photos and music

FreeAgent Theater Media Manager is an insult to anyone who actually knows what this product can do for them

The concept is the same: you plug in the FreeAgent DockStar, from Seagate, and the Network Adapter will bring the drive online for access from across the internet (or just somewhere in your own home network). Seagate's solution also includes three extra USB ports to get three other devices online as well, and will be available for $100, which includes a year of Pogoplug service. Each subsequent year costs $30 per year. [Seagate]

As a fan of the bus-powered FW800 drives that have the option of USB 2.0, I was pretty happy to learn about this one. We haven't checked it out yet, though it's probably worth a Lightning Review.

The only fishy part is that it comes with "required cables and dock," which makes me wonder if it can't pull all the necessary current from the FireWire (or USB 2.0) bus to spin that baby at 7200rpm. Does it need an extra power cord? I can't imagine it would, but I'll get a firm answer. Update/Firm Answer: It's fully bus-powered, and the dock is just for convenience. In the meantime, anyone who's regularly running around with external disks full of ProTools or Final Cut projects should be on this: $190 for 500GB of smooth spinning, portable goodness.

And no, there's no such thing as a true portable 10,000rpm 2.5" drive. Not yet at least. Check back in a few months.

(I should point out that, in the course of writing this up, I found that OWC also just introduced a 7200rpm 500GB drive with FW800, the Mercury On-The-Go Pro, though they cost about $50 more.)

From Seagate's press materials:

FreeAgent Go Pro for Mac Drive

Higher performance means faster workflow, and that equals greater productivity for creative professionals who work with digital video, music, photography and graphic arts. The FreeAgent Go Pro for Mac clocks in at 7200RPMs to deliver lightening fast performance and throughput with FireWire 800/400 interface for those that need higher-data transfer, making production and editing of large multi-media files a breeze.

The Seagate FreeAgent Go Pro for Mac storage solution is slim, compact and offers fast throughput with FireWire 800 or FireWire 400 connections and includes the required cables and dock. The Seagate FreeAgent Go Pro for Mac is available this month for a manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) of $129.99 USD for 250GB, $149.99 USD for 320GB and $189.99 for 500GB.

Their availability and pricing:

• Available in late July, Seagate BlackArmor NAS 220—$449.99 for 2TB and $699.99 for 4TB

• Available now, Seagate BlackArmor WS 110—$159.99 for 1TB and $309.99 for 2TB

• Available now, Seagate BlackArmor PS 110—$159.99 for 500GB

The BlackArmor NAS seems interesting to me, just because I'm a big fan of network storage that your entire house can access. Is that $450 and $700 price going to be affordable when you can get simiarly-sized NASes (and Windows Home Servers) for cheaper? It depends on what kind of security/backup/restore software Seagate bundles in.

This means that you get a ton of portable storage space, and you still don't need an AC adapter. You just plug the drive into a USB 2.0 port and proceed with your business. Simple, easy, nice. Pricing and availability is still up in the air for now, but we'll keep our eyes peeled. [Seagate]

The only downside I can see some of you noting is that the bus-powered 2.5" drive is 5400rpm, so not as ideal as a 7200rpm drive for serious amounts of randomly accessed video content, but it's amazing when you're moving files around.

I tested it against other drives using a 1.04GB file (an MPEG-4 rip of my Burn After Reading DVD). When I copied that file to a nice SanDisk Extreme III SDHC card, via an ExpressCard SanDisk SDHC reader, it took 1 minute 48 seconds. When I moved it to an old USB 2.0 IDE drive, the same file took 38 seconds. On a PC, I moved that file to a newer USB 2.0 drive, and it took longer, 52 seconds. When I moved that file from the Mac to the eGo via FireWire 800, it took just 15 seconds.

As you might have guessed, it took about twice as long via USB 2.0, and since Apple has pretty much given up on the FireWire 400 format, I didn't test that, but it would have probably been even slower still. I have to say, there was one drive that was even faster: A 7200rpm 3.5" 2TB Seagate Free Agent XTreme that you have to plug into the wall, connected to an HP notebook via eSATA. At first, it took 23 seconds to move that file from PC to drive. But I reformatted the drive so that it didn't have its own software in the way, and boom, the thing scooted from PC to drive in 11 seconds.

But I digress. The point is, for people who have a FireWire 800 jack, but might need to connect elsewhere using USB 2.0, grabbing this totally bus-powered drive is smart. I plan to offload all of my movies to it, and just plug them in when I am on the road, or at home and in possession of Apple Remote and Mini-DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapter.

It's super light (7 oz) and has "Drop Guard" protection for falls of up to 51 inches. My only gripe is the ridiculously shiny blue LED that indicates when the drive is being read or written to. It's so bright, I decided to tape over it, so that the neighbors wouldn't think I was busy laser-welding my homemade Iron Man suit (again).

The 500GB version is $150, and comes in the red you see. There's a 320GB that comes in blue for $110, and a white one that holds 250GB for just under $100. (It doesn't take a lot of math skills to see why the red is the best bet.) [Iomega]

Am I pissed off? Yes, because Seagate just sent over this beautiful, whisper-quiet 1TB eSATA drive that's compatible with quite a few cable-co DVRs. Well, I don't want to test it with my crappy Motorola DVR, I want to test it with my TiVo HD, which, with a tiny built-in 160GB drive, is in dire need of extra space. I guess you could say I'm mad because I love TiVo. Oh TiVo, why did you have to go and complicate our beautiful relationship?

All I get on screen is a message saying the drive is "unsupported," despite it being a relatively generic eSATA configuration designed for CE products, currently supported by DVRs from Scientific Atlanta, Motorola, DirecTV and Dish, and even runs, though technically unsupported, on the original TiVo Series3. I followed up and TiVo said this:

Western Digital has gone through our testing and certification process. We know it will work 100% of the time, something we cannot guarantee with other expanders.

The irony there is that when I did have a WD drive on a TiVo about a year ago, it actually malfunctioned once and I had to reset it, losing TV shows in the process. I pressed TiVo for a list of other companies it was testing. Turns out, there isn't one. This is all I could get:

The class of Western Digital drive in the DVR expander is designed specifically for 24/7 use in a CE device. It is optimized for constant read/write cycles and is designed to last much longer when used in a DVR application. Un-optimized or unknown drives add risk to system stability and would reduce expected lifetime.

I have to say, this logic only works when we're talking about drives intended for something other than DVRs, or drives from companies that do not have a reputation as a great hard drive maker, as Seagate does. The question is, why did TiVo stop testing CE eSATA drives after falling in love with WD's? I can only think of two reasons, sheer laziness or cash money dolla dolla bills, and of course, I'm not going to get a confirmation of either.

I have absolutely nothing against WD (even though that one did fail in my TiVo back in 2008). I like a lot of their products. I just can't believe that there's any merit to this exclusive partnership. When I buy an electronic toothbrush from Braun or Philips, am I restricted to using a particular kind of toothpaste? No. The understanding is that I will use toothpaste, but not what kind. Ditto here. There's an eSATA port, so the understanding is that I will use it. But, within reason, the brand choice should be up to me.

I will continue talking to both companies about this issue, because I feel strongly that the ban on Seagate drives be lifted here, especially for a totally legitimate means of adding extremely necessary additional storage. All this does is promote hackery. Speaking of which, anybody got any good tips for hacking a Seagate DVR expander onto my otherwise awesome TiVo HD? [Seagate Product Page]

The goo surpasses other 3d circuit technologies based on wires or solid material because it saves even more space. In that case, we're talking about 1.6mm of height, but that's enough to fit in a bigger screen or battery in something as thin as an mp3 player or slim phone.

The piece is pegged to ex CEO of Seagate Bill Watkins' arrival there. [NYT]

You plug it in, agree to the Terms of Service and it copies your entire hard drive—then every so often, records changes you make, so if your girlfriend has second or third thoughts about that home video you made together and deletes it to keep it from haunting her future Senate career, you can just zoom back a few hours into the past and retrieve it. Or any other precious file that mysteriously slips into the ether. If your whole system crashes out, it comes with a boot CD that you're not going to want to lose that'll let you restore your entire hard drive. Also, it looks like a hard drive for aliens.

It's $130 for 250GB of backup, or $200 for 500GB. [BoingBoing Gadgets, Seagate]

Its RPM rating is a rather odd 5900rpm—between the a laptop drive's standard 5400rpm and a standard desktop drive's 7200rpm (performance drives go up to 10,000rpm but are obviously power monsters). That 18 percent speed reduction is how it achieves most of its power savings over regular hard drives, not through green alchemy. Which means it's less suited to your high performance gaming rig than snugly slotted into your NAS or simply dedicated to straight media storage in your PC. [Cnet]

The new BlackArmor NAS 420/440 systems are network-attached storage infrastructures that can house up to four different hard drives at once, each holding a maximum of two terabytes of memory, which creates a total of either two, four, six, or eight terabytes of memory in just one system.

Intended for small companies—which support up to 50 networked computers—these BlackArmor drives were designed with both security and simplicity in mind. Proclaimed as the system with "unparalleled security, accessibility and peace of mind," it has a simple, built-in LCD screen and is meant for an easy to use, straight-out-of-the-box storage system.

Moreoever, with the BlackArmor security system, data is constantly protected because of its continuous and automatic backup abilities coupled with its full-system backup and RAID options. Furthermore, everything from individual files to entire volumes can be secured with password protection and encryption. Additional security to the BlackArmor NAS systems is so that it may be accessed through the Internet, hopefully without compromising any of its data.

Scheduled for release in May, the 2-terabyte BlackArmor NAS 420 will be available for $799.99, while the BlackArmor NAS 440 network servers will cost $1,200 for 4-terabytes, $1,700 for 6-terabytes, and $2,000 for 8-terabytes.

However, these numbers are all just theoretical spec. In reality, a combination of hardware and software limitations cause SATA drives run far slower than promised—which is something SATA3 hopes to overcome.

Seagate says SATA3 will be 100% faster than SATA2, while being backwards compatible with the existing SATA infrastructure (cables, etc).

However, there are a few catches: Seagate's SATA3 is not yet a standard that other manufacturers have agreed upon (like Western Digital)—with the exception of AMD, who has pledged to support Seagate's standard in their upcoming chipsets.

Also, Seagate doesn't have an actual hard drive to show you yet. However, they do plan to have a product on the market within the year. [CNET]

UPDATE: Upon a second reading, we think that CNET meant to say "100%" faster instead of "200%" faster.

HDTVs:
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• Sharp 720p 32" TV for $460 (normally $550)


Portable Media:
• 1st Gen Apple iPod Touch 32GB for $310 (normally $400)
• Archos 605 WiFi 30GB for $135 (normally $150-200)

Peripherals:
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• 25% off Dell LCD Displays
• Seagate 1.5 TB External Hard Drive for $112 (normally $130)
• 3-Pack of 6' HDMI cables for $8 (normally anywhere from $30 to $80)

Gaming:
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Cell Phones:
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The Free Agent Theater HD Media Player uses composite, S-Video and component video inputs, coaxial out for Dolby Digital surround sound. Its integrated dock is for the FreeAgent Go, what Seagate says is the world's thinnest external HDD, but there's a USB port for other storage devices, in case you're fresh out of FreeAgents. Its on-screen interface can display either file/folder trees or previews and thumbnails. And because of the Theater HD's dual-channel video converter, you can upconvert all your video files to 720p or 1080i. There's no 1080p support, and besides, there's no HDMI, though Seagate says something like that will come along later this year.

As for the on-screen UI and accompanying remote, there are also easy one-touch buttons that will allow you to perform simple tasks automatically, such as starting a slideshow of photos and music, simultaneously, with just one button. Even DVD files, ripped onto your external hard drive, can be played simply by going to the DVD's folder and clicking the play or menu button on the remote, without having to hunt for the actual video file. Seagate says the system supports MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 formats, and DIVX files with video resolutions for NTSC, PAL and HD up to 1080i, and that it even supports subtitles. It does not, however, handle H.264.

From what I can tell, this is mostly a device for mainstream users who don't need a ton of advanced features, but rather an easy, out of the box experience. Available on March 4, the Seagate FreeAgent Theater HD will sell for $130. You can also purchase it bundled with a 250GB FreeAgent Go drive for $230, or better still, a 500GB model for $280. [Seagate FreeAgent Theater]

Seagate's 2TB constellation drive, expected this September, is mainly exciting because it runs at a full 7200RPM while Western Digital's model operates at an eco-friendly, undisclosed speed. Given that as hard drives get more storage it only takes longer for systems to seek out their data, speed is an especially important point. Then again, Western Digital's model is out now for $300. We'll be curious what Seagate's fatty Constellation goes for when it arrives later this year. [Seagate via PCMag]