Posted 09/15/09 at 08:11:16 PM by Ryan Whitwam

Three hard drive manufacturers have announced new products in a shockingly short time frame. Toshiba is releasing a new 1.8 inch drive for MP3 players, with capacities from 60 to 160GB. In the slightly larger 2.5 inch form factor, Toshiba is offering 640GB drive suitable for notebooks.

Western Digital is also offering a 640GB, 2.5 inch drive. This new Scorpio Blue model is thin enough to fit in any standard laptop drive bay. The 640 GB drive will retail for about $145 at launch. Western Digital’s 750GB and 1TB Scorpios are three platter drives, and are too thick to fit in most standard notebooks.

Hitachi’s new offerings are in the 3.5 inch space. The company’s new 1TB CinemaStar 7K1000.C should be shipping by year’s end. A second Hitachi 1TB drive, the 5K1000 CoolSpin, is designed to be quieter at the expense of speed. It only spins at 5400rpm instead of 7200rpm like the 7K1000.C. No pricing was announced.

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Posted 09/16/08 at 07:48:37 PM by Mark Edward Soper

The Iomega Zip drive once was synonymous with consumer-friendly data backup. Seagate aims to change that with a huge makeover of its FreeAgent line of external hard disks and a companion advertising campaign designed to tug at the heartstrings of today's increasingly media-consuming families.

Announced Monday, Seagate's new FreeAgent models include the portable FreeAgent|Go and the desktop FreeAgent|Desk (both available in separate editions for Windows PCs and Macs) as well as the high-performance desktop FreeAgent|XTreme for Windows PCs. The goal of the new line of products is to "Save, Share. Simplify."

To learn more about how Seagate plans to make its slogan come true, join us after the jump.

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