Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today announced it has shipped over one million drives using shingled magnetic recording (SMR). SMR is the next generation in storage technology and is critical for continued improvement in areal density (the amount of data that can be stored on a single disk) to support global growth in cloud and mobile usage. The SMR generation of storage technology is expected to power gains of up to 25 percent.

"With nearly 7 billion inhabitants on earth we are creating an astounding 2.7 Zettabytes of data a year and as such are rapidly approaching the physical limits of how much can be written on a single conventional hard disk drive," said Mark Re, Seagate's chief technology officer. "With SMR technology, Seagate is on track to improve areal density by up to 25 percent or 1.25 TB per disk, delivering hard drives with the lowest cost per gigabyte and reaching capacities of 5 TB and beyond."

Seagate Technology plc., a world leader in storage solutions, today took the wraps off the new Seagate Ultra Mobile HDD designed exclusively for mobile devices. Integrated with the Seagate Mobile Enablement Kit which includes Seagate's Dynamic Data Driver software technology, the new storage solution delivers up to 7x the storage capacity of a traditional 64GB tablet with the same power, performance and reliability of a flash device.

"Coupling an ultra-thin, high-capacity HDD with software designed to optimize integration into tablets at a value-add price has allowed us to deliver a truly ground-breaking solution, enabling our partners to reimagine the mobile device," said Steve Luczo, president, CEO and chairman of Seagate. "By empowering our OEMs with this revolutionary new technology, we have invited the industry to re-think the mobile market making this offering a true game-changer in the world of storage."

So you're planning on building a NAS system. You've already selected your NAS unit (a Thecus, of course), but you're wondering what drives to put inside. SSDs? Nah, too pricey and a little small. So HDDs it is. But which ones do you buy? Are they all made the same? What speed RPM and what buffer size would be best for a NAS environment? If only HDD manufacturers would start building custom drives for network storage!

It just so happens, dear user, that today is your day. Western Digital has officially announced the release of its latest NAS-specific Red HDDs: the RD1000M and the RM500M. Designed specifically for Network Attached Storage systems, these latest members of the Red family feature 4TB of storage in a 3.5" enclosure (RD1000M) and 1TB or 750GB of storage in a 2.5" enclosure (RM500M).

Toshiba Corporation today announced that it will expand its family of small form factor 2.5-inch HDDs with a new series that packs up to 500GB of data storage into a unit with a height of just 7mm. The new "MQ01ACF" series will start shipping from August 30.

The "MQ01ACF" series is Toshiba's first 7,278rpm, 2.5-inch product with a 7 mm height. The series offers two models: the "MQ01ACF050" with a recording capacity of 500 GB and the 320 GB "MQ01ACF032". A maximum internal transfer rate of 1,850 Mbit/s is realized by improvement to linear recording density and the 7,278 rpm rotational speed. Implementation of the 6 Gbit/s SATA interface also boosts data transfer rates over those of current models.

ASUS plans to expand its VivoBook series with a new AMD-powered member, the X102BA. This 10.2-inch ultra-portable should bring Windows 8 experience to the masses, with its cost-effective innards, including an AMD A4-1200 dual-core APU with Radeon HD 8180 graphics, 2 GB of RAM, and 320 GB of HDD storage. Its software bundle includes not just Windows 8, but also Office Home and Student 2013. ASUS reportedly plans to price the X102BA at 330 Euros, when the notebook hits stores some time next month.

Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO), the industry consortium dedicated to sustaining the quality, integrity and dissemination of Serial ATA (SATA) technology, today announced the ratification of its revision 3.2 specification. The latest specification includes SATA Express, a new specification that enables the coexistence of SATA and PCIe storage devices, as well as enhancements in power management, new SATA form-factors, and optimizations for solid state hybrid drives (SSHDs).

"SATA technology continues to evolve to accommodate ever-changing storage industry requirements," said Mladen Luksic, SATA-IO President. "The updates featured in the revision 3.2 specification, such as SATA Express and enhancements for emerging solid state hybrid drives, are driven by current market trends. These new features demonstrate SATA-IO's ongoing commitment to providing low-cost, high-performance storage solutions."

ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high-performance DRAM modules and NAND Flash application products, has made another advance in ultra-slim external hard drives with the launch of the DashDrive Elite HE720 in 1 terabyte capacity. The HE720 offers high speed data transmission through a USB 3.0 interface, and has a thickness of only 8.9 mm.

The chassis of the HE720 is made of highly reflective stainless steel and provides 9H grade scratch resistance, which prevents damage and marring even after long-term use. A gleaming LED indicator indicates power and data transfer status, accentuating the modern metallic lines of the drive body. The USB 3.0 interface offers transfer efficiency up to three times that of older USB 2.0 devices, but retains full backward compatibility with earlier versions.

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today unveiled two new enterprise-class hard disk drives (HDD) optimized for emerging cloud infrastructures and large scale data centers- the Seagate Terascale HDD and the Seagate Enterprise Performance 10K HDD v7. Ideal for system builders, the Terascale HDD and Enterprise Performance 10K HDD v7 provide high-capacity storage in low-power configurations making them perfect for efficiently and affordably storing the ever-growing amount of unstructured data typically stored in the cloud.

"Over the next eight years, the capacity shipped into the cloud will double and by 2020 personal and enterprise clouds will account for greater than 60 percent of the total storage capacity shipped. With this huge shift of capacity to the cloud, storage providers will need to deploy more storage quickly all while increasing capacity and lowering energy costs," said Scott Horn, Seagate vice president of marketing. "Engineered with this mind, these new drives deliver on all fronts providing high capacity-to-power ratios and ensuring consistent performance at an affordable cost- making them an ideal solution for the cloud."

LSI Corporation today announced it has expanded the LSI Nytro product portfolio of PCIe flash adapters with a new, high-capacity 3.2TB Nytro WarpDrive accelerator card, and expanded capacity, connectivity and software capabilities across the Nytro MegaRAID product family. The new offerings extend the industry's broadest portfolio of PCIe flash adapter products, allowing customers to choose the optimal solution to uniquely address their challenges across a wide range of enterprise applications and datacenter workloads.

LSI Nytro products are being deployed to deliver the ultra-low latency and high-bandwidth performance required for Big Data applications, hyperscale web and cloud datacenters, financial services, and virtual desktop and server workloads. The products also help customers shrink their overall storage footprint and power requirements, leading to increased datacenter efficiency and lower IT costs.

Toshiba's Storage Products Business Unit of Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., a committed technology leader, announces the slim, 7 mm MQ01ABFH solid state hybrid drive (SSHD) series. Equipped with Toshiba's NAND flash and available in 500GB1 and 320GB capacities, the MQ01ABFH series is the first Toshiba SSHD drive family in 7 mm. The series continues Toshiba's legacy of providing world-class storage products, and offers customers a complete lineup of 2.5-inch solid state hybrid drives with the previously announced 1 TB and 750 GB MQ01ABDH series 9.5 mm SSHDs for ultrathin and thin and light notebook PCs, multimedia and gaming applications, and traditional laptop PCs.

Drawing upon its knowledge and experience in NAND flash, Toshiba optimized the NAND flash performance into a tiered-storage approach that uses the speed of the DRAM and NAND components with the high-capacity of rotating media. The SSHD delivers SSD-like performance without dependence on external drivers or assistance from the host system. The PCMark Vantage Average HDD Score, the established industry method for measuring SSHD read/write performance and responsiveness, for the MQ01ABF500H is approximately 20,000, surpassing the 16,000 industry standard result.

Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of NAND Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, announces its Super Hybrid drives for enterprise and desktop consumers.
The Super Hybrid is a group of SSDs and an HDD combined together that is connected to a system through a PCIe slot. This new product supports sequential read and write speeds of up to 800 MB/s with a cache of 192 GB.

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today announced it's shipping its thinnest hard disk drive (HDD) ever to OEM partners - the Seagate Laptop Ultrathin HDD. Just 5mm thin, the Laptop Ultrathin HDD is designed to be integrated into ultra-thin, lightweight mobile computing devices and tablets all while delivering high capacity storage at an affordable price.

"When we originally demonstrated this solution last September, we knew we had a truly innovative product that would empower our partners to reimagine mobile applications," said Steve Luczo, president, CEO and chairman of Seagate. "The strong support from our OEM partners indicates we have delivered on our vision and look forward to a new wave of innovative solutions enabled by this revolutionary product."

COUGAR, leading PC case and power supply maker has introduced their latest PC case, the Archon. With an elegant look and support for longer high-end graphics cards up to 310 mm, this case is the latest iteration from COUGAR's line of sleek gaming cases. The ARCHON delivers expansion capability in a subdued enclosure with windows, grills and an orange highlighted interior. It comes with three 2.5" HDD/SSD trays and three 3.5" HDD trays and features easily cleanable detachable air filters on the front and bottom covers. Like many of their other cases, there is a transparent acrylic side cover so that you can see the internals of the build.

The case will be kept cool with support for up to five fans: one rear 120 mm fan (pre-installed), two optional front side 120 mm fans, and two optional side 120 mm fans along with seven PCI vented slots that provide flexibility and ventilation performance for multiple graphics cards solutions. If you need to kick it up a notch with water cooling, you can do that too with two holes (with rubber protection) on the rear panel.

Seagate Technology today announced the new Seagate Video 3.5 HDD- the industry's first 4TB, 3.5-inch hard disk drive (HDD) engineered specifically for use in video applications such as digital video recorders (DVRs), set-top boxes (STBs), and surveillance systems. Purpose-built for video solutions, the Video 3.5 HDD can store up to 480 hours of high-definition (HD) content making it the industry's highest-capacity drive designed specifically for video.

Engineered to deliver superior performance and operation in three key areas of importance to manufacturers- high capacity and streaming capability, reliability and acoustics- the Video 3.5 HDD is ideal for satellite and cable providers and surveillance system builders. Featuring capacities up to 4TB, the drive supports up to 16 simultaneous HD streams or 20 standard-definition streams as well as 24x7 operation capabilities making it ideal for video content applications.

Seagate Technology plc. today announced that it intends, subject to market and other conditions, to offer up to of $1.0 billion aggregate principal amount of senior notes (the "Notes") in a private placement. The Notes are expected to be issued by Seagate HDD Cayman, an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of Seagate Technology plc, and guaranteed by Seagate Technology plc.

Seagate intends to use the net proceeds from the offering of the Notes to replenish cash associated with the recent redemption of the 10% Senior Secured Notes, to retire up to an aggregate amount of $250 million of outstanding senior notes, and for general corporate purposes, which may include, but are not limited to, capital expenditures and other investments in the business, and other repurchases of indebtedness.

Cooler Master, an industry leading PC component manufacturer today announces the N200, N400 and N600, a new line of cases with a modernistic design that has the capacity for an internal 240mm radiator even for the smallest of the three, N200 (a mini-ITX/micro-ATX case). XtraFlow airflow.

N200, is the first mini-ITX/micro-ATX case that has internal space for 120mm or 240mm radiators in the front of the case or a 120mm radiator at the back. Thanks to an all mesh front panel, 2 high-quality Cooler Master XtraFlo fans and large air vents, it boasts excellent cooling performance. Despite its extremely compact size, the N200 supports 160mm tall CPU tower coolers, long high end VGAs, including the upcoming HD7990, four 2.5" SSDs and three of 3.5" HDDs.

Chinese peripherals company Orico introduced a trio of external multi-bay 3.5-inch HDD enclosures. These include a gigantic 10-bay stacker (model: 1088USJ3), and its 8-bay (8988USJ3), and 5-bay (5988SUSJ3) siblings. The three use standard ATX PSUs to power the drives. The three feature matte black SECC steel bodies, with brushed metal front. The three internally use SATA 6 Gb/s interface, and lockable caddies. The 10- and 8-bay models only feature USB 3.0, while the 5-bay gives you both USB 3.0 and eSATA host connectivity options. The enclosures lack RAID support, so each disk is visible to the host as an independent mass storage device, with partitions showing up as volumes. The 10-, 8-, and 5-bay enclosures are priced at RMB 2399¥ ($390), 1999¥ ($325), and 1399¥ ($227), respectively.

QNAP Systems, Inc. today announced the release of the Turbo NAS TS-x21 and TS-x20 series for home users and home offices. The new models in the TS-x21 series are equipped with 2.0 GHz CPU, 1GB DDR3 RAM, and the TS-x20 series with 1.6 GHz CPU, 512MB DDR3 RAM. Both series deliver superior performance for daily routines in file storage, sharing, and data backup, and serve as ideal media centers for storing and sharing huge multimedia files.

The TS-x21 and TS-x20 series feature the brand-new Turbo NAS operating system QTS 4.0. The new QTS 4.0 integrates multi-window operations into the web-based user interface, adds cross-device file synchronization, several smart mobile apps, and more. In an era where almost everyone has at lease one mobile phone or tablet device, the QTS 4.0 fulfills people's needs of mobile data access and synchronization, and storage for huge quantities of data. What's more, the QTS 4.0's multi-window user interface introduces users to an unprecedented NAS management experience. In addition, the multimedia applications and multi-tasking designs not only increase management efficiency but also transform home entertainment.

HABEY USA, a leading manufacturer of embedded computer and an Associate member of the Intel Intelligent Systems Alliance, introduces the PRO-6820. This is a fanless barebone system, with a chassis built tough for extended industrial processing indoors or outdoors. The system measures in at 9.45"x9.96"x4.53", not much bigger than our small form factor systems, running off Intel's 3rd Generation Ivy Bridge Quad Core i3/i5/i7 processor, and capable of up to 8GB of memory from 2x 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM slots.

Rich with I/Os, the PRO-6820 offers 6x instal USB slots, 2x front accessible USB 3.0 slots and 4x rear USB 2.0 slots. The system also has 2x PS2 ports, 1x externally accessible 8-bit GPIO port, 4x COM ports, 6x LAN ports, 1x mic-in, 1x audio-out, 1x CF Card Socket & 1x externally accessible 2.5" SATA HDD. The Intel Integrated HD Graphics controller allows 1x VGA port with resolution up to 2048x1536 & 1x DVI-D ports with resolution up to 1920x1200.

Century Japan announced the CSS25U3 line of external drive enclosures. Capable of holding 9.5 mm-thick HDDs and SSDs in the 2.5-inch SATA form-factor, the enclosure supports SATA 6 Gb/s interface internally, and connects to the host over USB 3.0 SuperSpeed. A single cable handles both power and host-connectivity. Measuring 85 x 134 x 12.5 mm (WxDxH), its dry-weight is 60 g. It is available in four color options: black (CSS25U3BK6G), silver (CSS25U3SV6G), green (CSS25U3GR6G), and red (CSS25U3RD6G). To stay in shape, the enclosure avoids using a square type-B receptacle, and instead uses a rectangular type-A one. Slated for the end of this month, it is expected to be priced at 2,480 JPY (US $25.7).

Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ: STX), a worldwide leader in storage solutions, today announced it is the first hard disk drive manufacturer to ship two billion hard disk drives (HDD)-a staggering number fueled by the explosive demand for storage from mobile applications, cloud infrastructures, social media, business applications and a wide variety of consumer markets. A testament to the pivotal role played by storage in today's digital world, it took Seagate 29 years to reach one billion units shipped and just four years to reach the second billion milestone.

"This is truly an impressive accomplishment and I am proud to lead this company as we celebrate this success," said Steve Luczo, president, CEO and chairman of Seagate. This achievement is a testament to the commitment of our employees whose relentless dedication and personal pride continue to be the fabric of this company."

Building on the momentum of its current line of solid state hybrid drives (SSHD), Seagate Technology plc today announced it will begin shipping its third-generation of SSHD products. Featuring the Seagate Laptop SSHD, 7 mm-high Seagate Laptop Thin SSHD designed for the thinnest and lightest laptops in the industry, and the all-new Seagate Desktop SSHD, the line of drives will deliver blazing-fast performance and high-capacity at an affordable price.

Boasting solid state drive (SSD) like speed and hard disk drive capacity, the new Seagate Laptop and Laptop Thin SSHDs are the most affordable way to increase your laptop performance. With storage performance up to 40 percent faster than previous generations, the Laptop and Laptop Thin SSHDs can add as much as 30 percent to total system performance - regardless of the processor inside the system. These products also enable system builders to build high-performance, high-capacity systems, including new thin and light laptops, at mass-market price points.

Apricorn, a leader in data security products for business, today announced the Aegis Bio 3.0, an innovative 'software free' biometric USB 3.0 drive that safeguards data with secure fingerprint access and military grade 265-bit AES-XTS hardware encryption. The Aegis Bio is cross platform compatible with USB 3.0 performance. Its compact durable design with integrated USB cable is perfect for the office or taking sensitive data on the road. Available with either a hard drive or SSD the Aegis Bio's 1 TB model is priced at $249.

Designed for those that wish to break away from passwords and PINs, and utilize their unique fingerprint for secure access to their data, the Aegis Bio combines powerful hardware based authentication with real-time 256-bit AES-XTS data encryption. The result, a formidable hardware based security solution that requires no admin rights to setup or access data and works independently of the host OS, providing an exceptional level of data protection that is ideal for use in a multi-platform corporate environment.

Icy Dock introduced the Icy RAID Hard drive failure is the reality to prepare for. In the long run, you will have to face the certainty that all hard drives fail no matter how cautious you have been. Imagine what would happen if the drive fails and you lost all of your family photos, critical office data, and your work portfolio? To prevent the data loss from a hard drive failure, our response is the ICYRaid enclosure to make the user experience of creating a physical backup (RAID array) a very pleasant one. The ICYRaid series MB662U3-2S packs the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface, tray-less drive installation design, easy to setup process, and an advanced cooling system - all these great features in a small, yet elegant enclosure that can be taken where you go as a professional media storage device.

HGST (formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and now a Western Digital company, NASDAQ: WDC) today announced the industry's highest-capacity 10,000 RPM, enterprise-class hard drive - the Ultrastar C10K1200. Providing a capacity extension to HGST's proven Ultrastar C10K900 product line, the new 2.5-inch Ultrastar C10K1200 features a SAS 6Gb/s interface for reliable data throughput, a 64MB cache buffer for optimized read/write response time, and a fast 10K rotational speed for reliable high-performance computing. All this, combined with the drive's low power, high capacity and high performance attributes, results in higher density servers, blades and network storage arrays that helps reduce space requirements, lowers cooling costs and improves total cost of ownership (TCO).

Increasing storage needs, shrinking floor space and budgets, and reducing power and cooling are just a few challenges that datacenter managers face today, making it challenging to scale and sustain business growth. Whether building datacenters for public clouds, private clouds or traditional datacenters, adopting the right tiered storage strategy delivers greater efficiencies in terms of reliability, performance, capacity and power, and can make a vast difference in the ability to lower TCO.