Seagate

LAS VEGAS--When on the go, you want to stay connected at all times and carry as much data as possible without having to physically carry a lot, right?

Soon you'll be able to do just that.

Seagate revealed and demonstrated at CES 2012 the prototype of a product tentatively called the Personal Server 4G LTE Wi-Fi. This is basically a combination of what the company's GoFlex Satellite has to offer and a 4G LTE mobile hot spot in one compact box.

Seagate said this is result of a 1.5-year collaboration with Verizon, which will be the exclusive … Read more

Hard disk drive supplier Seagate Technology provided a financial update today, reiterating that demand for HDD units will exceed supply in 2012 in the wake of flooding last year in Thailand.

Seagate updated its financial outlook for fiscal second quarter 2012 on Wednesday afternoon, stating it shipped approximately 47 million disk drives, which included approximately 700,000 Samsung disk drives.

Revenue is expected to be between $3.1 billion and $3.2 billion, the company said. Analysts had projected revenue of $2.79 billion on average, according to Bloomberg. Seagate completed the acquisition of Samsung's hard disk drive business … Read more

Sick of living in the cloud?

The new Pogoplug Series 4 is a device that looks to take the best of cloud computing and home network-attached storage and combine the two into a seamless experience. Available today, it certainly seems like a perfectly timed idea in the wake of seemingly daily frustrations with services like Apple's own iCloud and iTunes Match.

Maybe the fourth time's a charm: I've reviewed multiple Pogoplugs before, but none of them came close to what this new version offers. The Pogoplug is a NAS drive without the complications, and it's finally hit a sweet spot for price, size, and feature set. The newly released Pogoplug Series 4 is a latecomer to the holiday shopping season, but if you're getting fed up with iCloud and what other cloud services have to offer, then this $99 device might be what you're looking for.… Read more

If you've been contemplating getting an SSD for your laptop but can't justify the cost, the new 750GB Momentus XT hybrid drive is the answer.

Released just a few days ago, the second-generation hybrid drive from Seagate offers more storage space than the previous model, and its performance is even closer to that of an SSD. … Read more

Seagate Technology said its sales will be stronger than expected as it is one of the few hard-drive makers to navigate the floods in Thailand successfully.

Flooding in Thailand has wreaked havoc on the hard-drive supply chain, and shortages are likely into 2012. Seagate facilities were largely unscathed, but the company said that its “ability to manufacture hard-disk drives has been impacted due to external component supply constraints.”

Nevertheless, Seagate’s outlook is looking strong. Seagate said that it will ship about 43 million units in the December quarter (fiscal second quarter) with revenue of $2.8 billion.

Wall Street … Read more

I remember the first time I learned about hybrid hard drives--models that combine traditional spinning platters with a sizable chunk of solid-state flash memory.

The goal was to combine the best of both storage worlds into one drive: The low cost and high capacity of a hard disk, plus the speed of flash. It sounded like a great idea to me.

That was way back in 2006, though--and hybrid drives have never quite taken off. But the concept still makes sense, and hard-disk kingpin Seagate is releasing a new hybrid drive designed to deliver on the technology's promise.

The … Read more

Seagate today announced that it's now shipping the second generation of its popular hybrid drive, the Momentus XT.

The new drive is the upgrade to the original Momentus XT, the first and only mass-produced hybrid drive on the market, which was released more than a year ago and has been widely adopted by OEM system builders.

Similar to the first generation, the new Momentus XT combines both traditional platter-based hard drive and solid-state storage. The new drive, however, now offers up to 750GB of storage space (as opposed to 500GB of the previous version), which includes twice the amount … Read more

Seagate has won a major payout in an arbitration dispute with its chief rival, Western Digital.

On Friday, an arbitrator in Minnesota awarded Seagate $525 million after the hard drive maker alleged that Western Digital misappropriated "confidential information and trade secrets" from a former Seagate employee. According to Western Digital, the sum does not include interest, which will need to be determined at a later point.

Details of the dispute are confidential at this time, but Western Digital said in a statement today that it believes the arbitrator's decision wouldn't hold up in court.

"We … Read more

Wondering how high hard disk drive prices are rising because of the flooding in Thailand? Computer retailer Newegg offers a quick way to track HDD pricing.

For example, a search on a Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200 RPM, model ST31000524AS drive shows that the price jumped to $149.99 from $49.99 a couple of weeks ago.

(And that same drive is $179.99 at major reseller CDW. And see Nextag price history of drive here.)

Or check out a Western Digital 1TB 7200 RPM, model RE4 WD1003FBYX. That drive jumped in the same time frame to $249.99 from $107.… Read more