Seagate

Wednesday morning I visited the new Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters of Zonbu, makers of the low-cost, service-supported Linux computer I mentioned last month (here). I met with Zonbu CEO Grégoire Gentil, who gave me an overview of the company's business plan and a demo of the system. He also offered… Read more

Seagate Technology, the number one maker of magnetic hard drives, is going to make hard drives based around flash memory too, says CEO Bill Watkins.

"We are going to have a solid state drive, probably for enterprise first," he said during an interview on Wednesday. "We think we can make these drives better."

Seagate's decision is a significant turning point in the religious war in the storage market. The flash versus magnetic debate has been issue No. 1 in the storage world for the past two years. Magnetic hard drives have been a crucial component … Read more

Like Tony Blair, the hard drive industry is looking at a third way.

To more densely record data on hard drives, that is. Disk track recording involves storing data in tracks laid down in a precise pattern on a platter, according to an article by Rick Merritt of EE Times. It's similar to patterned media hard drives, but could get to market earlier. Disk track recording could show up in drives in two years or so. Patterned media hard drives may not show up until 2012 or later.

"It's probably not a factor of two better than … Read more

Seagate announced on Monday two hard drives that break the 1-terabyte barrier, the Barracuda 7200.11 and Barracuda ES.2, while Iomega announced two external drive models.

Seagate's ES.2 is geared for high-capacity storage systems and includes technology called Rotational Vibration Feed Forward designed to maintain performance despite the disruptions of other nearby drives. It can use both the Serial Attached SCIS (SAS) and Serial ATA (SATA) interfaces. And its PowerTrim feature reduces power consumption 20 percent overall compared to the company's previous 750GB drives, Seagate said.

The Barracuda 7200.11, like the ES.2, stores data … Read more

Demo 07: Seagate is showing off its new "Dave" technology mobile hard drive. Available in 10GB or 20GB capacities (bigger drives coming later), its unique feature is that it's wireless. You can connect to it via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, or via USB cable if you're feeling old-fashioned.

The Bluetooth thing I get, and it's interesting: You could use it as outboard storage for a cameraphone or a future camera that has Bluetooth. The fact that it connects via Wi-Fi means that, essentially, it's also a portable, wireless, battery-powered network-attached storage device too. And that'… Read more

At CES 2007, Seagate announced a new family of hard drives (or "data movers," as Seagate called them): the FreeAgent family. It includes four members, each available in multiple capacities. The unifying element, aside from external design, is the idea that you can access your content wherever you need it.

The FreeAgent Pro is a combination desktop and online solution designed for creative professionals. It allows you to create synchronization rules for various types of data. For example, you could arrange to have your Outlook address book sync to your iPod (when you dock it) every time you … Read more

Back in April, Seagate released its first single-disc 750GB hard drive based on perpendicular recording technology. Today, Seagate's corporate communications team sent out an e-mail that confirms they're working on a 1TB 3.5-inch hard drive, also based on the same technology. There's no actual product announcement, which is, well, odd. But according to Seagate, we should see shipment of the 1TB drive in the first half of 2007.

And if you find visual aids helpful, check out Hitachi's jaw-dropping video that explains the gist of perpendicular recording. I apologize for foisting disco on you. Actually, … Read more