Posted 10/21/09 at 04:00:47 PM by Bart Salisbury

Seagate’s first quarter marked a reversal for the hard drive manufacturer. While overall revenues are 12 percent lower for the first quarter of 2010 than they were for the first quarter of 2009, Seagate realized a $179 million profit, up threefold from the first quarter  of 2009.

Seagate shipped 46.3 million disk drives during the quarter, up 14 percent over the previous quarter, but down some four percent from the previous year. Still, Seagate CEO Steve Luczo is a happy camper: "The company has returned to its operating model well ahead of our expectations of six months ago and now expects to sustain gross margin of 22-26 per cent.”

Seagate is confident enough in it’s financial position to start a more aggressive push on its line of Solid State Drives (SSDs). These SATA-interfaced SSDs will be targeted initially to businesses, particular in the broad volume server market. Seagate is not looking at SSDs as replacements for hard drives. In fact, Seagate will be promoting it’s new single-platter 2.5-inch drive, which sits a mere 7 mm high, for upcoming ultra-thin notebooks, such as the Dell Adamo XPS.

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Posted 10/05/09 at 02:30:00 PM by Nathan Edwards

We haven’t seen a new two-terabyte drive on the market in a while—not since we reviewed the Western Digital Caviar Green in May, in fact—but Seagate has finally added a 2TB drive to its Barracuda LP line of desktop drives. The LP (or low-power) line is Seagate’s “green” offering, equivalent to Western Digital’s GreenPower and Samsung’s EcoDrives. With an unusual 5,900rpm rotational speed—down from the 7,200rpm offered by the rest of the Barracuda line—the LP series trades performance for power savings and reduced heat output. Thankfully, it doesn’t sacrifice much speed in the process.
 
Unlike the performance-oriented Barracuda 7200.11 and 7200.12 series, the LP focuses on low power consumption, at both idle and full-spin states. We praised the low power consumption of Western Digital’s 2TB drive compared to the 1.5TB Barracuda 7200.11, but the LP series evens the playing field. On our test rig, the 2TB Barracuda drew around 4W at idle, slightly lower than the 2TB Caviar Green’s 5W, and 8W while operating, while the Caviar operated at around 9W. Both drives draw less power than the Barracudas of yore.

Continue reading this review after the jump.

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Posted 09/21/09 at 07:51:47 AM by Paul Lilly

Seagate today announced it has begun shipping what it claims is the "world's fastest, largest-capacity mainstream desktop hard drive" dubbed the Barracuda XT. While the Barracuda XT isn't the first 2TB hard drive to sport a 7200RPM spindle speed, it is the first one to feature a SATA 6Gb/s interface.

"Capacity and performance remain the defining attributes of hard drives for PC gamers, digital multimedia content developers, and many other customers requiring high-end systems at home and in the office," said Dave Mosley, executive vice president of Sales and Marketing at Seagate. "Seagate is meeting these requirements with the first 7200RPM desktop drive to combine 2TB of storage capacity with the fastest Serial ATA interface to date."

Hit the jump to learn more about the SATA 6Gb/s interface and what you can expect out of the new Barracuda XT.

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Posted 09/15/09 at 06:15:21 PM by Jason Barry

Seagate announced the release of their new FreeAgent Theater+™ HD Media Player in a press release today. With a modest prices increase over the previous version--key features include 1080p HD, Dolby DTS, HDMI, network support, and new file-format compatibility.

The FreeAgent Theatre provides a turnkey solution to media center PCs, making it easy to explore media in your living room. The new device features the docking system developed for FreeAgent drives as well as two additional USB ports to attach any storage device to the player. Further, when attached to the network it can pull content from file shares, NAS devices, and the internet.

The new player is available immediately from Seagate.com and online retailers. To find a complete listing of features and specifications visit Seagate.com.

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Posted 08/27/09 at 12:00:01 PM by Nathan Edwards

Last month we reviewed Western Digital’s MyBook World Edition, a small, white, single-drive, one-terabyte NAS box aimed solidly at Joe User. This month, we have the Seagate BlackArmor NAS 440, the MyBook’s polar opposite in many ways.  It’s big, it’s black, it’s user-serviceable, comes with four Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB drives, and is marketed toward small businesses without a dedicated IT staff.

The BlackArmor 440 is a brick, the front of which has a two-line green LCD status screen, a front door that opens to reveal the four hot-swappable screwless drive bays, one of the box’s four USB 2.0 host ports, and a power button. The back holds the 12cm exhaust fan, the power jack (for the external power brick), two Gigabit Ethernet ports, and the other three USB 2.0 ports.

The LCD display offers system status information and a few buttons to navigate with, but the real power comes from the BlackArmor’s web interface, which is easily accessible from the BlackArmor Discovery software included with the NAS. The Discovery software also provides easy mapping of shared folders—the defaults are Public and Downloads.

Continue reading this review after the jump.

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Posted 07/07/09 at 10:00:00 AM by Nathan Edwards

It was a big month for storage. Not only did Western Digital bring to the market the first 2TB consumer hard drive, but Seagate came to the game with another milestone: a two-platter 1TB drive. Both offerings contain 500GB platters, the highest platter density yet achieved.

The Barracuda 7200.12 1TB is the first drive we’ve tested from the 12th generation of Seagate’s 7,200rpm Barracuda line, and it’s Seagate’s best chance for a fresh start following the firmware issues that plagued its 7200.11 line.

The 1TB 7200.12 has much in common with drives from the previous generation of Barracudas: It features 32MB of L2 cache, 7,200rpm rotational speeds, and SATA 3Gb/s data transfer with Native Command Queuing. The 7200.12, though, needs just two platters to achieve 1TB, whereas the 7200.11 used four.

Continue reading this review after the jump.

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Posted 07/03/09 at 09:22:43 AM by Paul Lilly

Seagate, who originally planned to serve up enterprise SSD products in 2008 and later changed its target date to sometime in 2009, has suffered a setback in SSD development that may end up delaying the release until at least 2010, according to an investment bank briefing note.

"Notably in the last two weeks, we heard that Seagate (the company we think is closest in terms of market penetration) had another setback in its efforts to design an enterprise storage drive to compete with ZeusIOPS," wrote Kevin D. Vassily, an analyst at investment bank Pacific Crest Securities.

It remains unclear exactly what kind of setback Seagate is running into, but Vassily did bring up LSI in his note, the company Seagate picked to design and supply controller silicon for its SSDs. If Seagate is forced to find a new supplier, it might be mid-2011 or later before Seagate is able to ship SSDs in any volume, Vassily says.

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Posted 06/22/09 at 05:30:29 PM by Andy Salisbury

Earlier today Seagate announced several additions to its line of BlackArmor external hard drives.

The drives, which are aimed at small businesses, include the BlackArmor NAS 220 storage server, BlackArmor WS 110 external drive and the BlackArmor PS 110 portable drive. The NAS 220 will be able to hold up to 4TB of storage, and sports data protection for up to 20 PCs on a network. The WS 110, which is meant to be a desktop accessory, will come with USB 2.0 and eSATA connectors, and packs with up to 2TB worth of space. And, lastly, the PS 110 comes with up to 500GB of storage, and will feature with a standard USB 2.0 connector.

The NAS 220 will be available starting at $699.99 for the 4TB model starting in July, whereas the WS 110 and PS 110 are available now for $309.99 (2TB) and $159.99 (500GB), respectively.

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