Seagate today announced sweeping advances in its global push to help secure notebook computer information from theft or loss. To combat growing threats to mobile information, Seagate, the world leader in storage solutions, is now shipping its groundbreaking, self-encrypting notebook PC hard drives, now with up to 320GB of capacity, to the worldwide distribution channel, with 500GB models coming soon. Additionally, Dell is now shipping a notebook with a 160GB self-encrypting hard drive. McAfee is set to provide software for the enterprise-wide management of notebooks with Seagate Secure hard drives.

Powerful, easy-to-use notebook data security is increasingly important as the global adoption of mobile PCs continues to soar and more notebooks are used to store sensitive personal and business information. Lost or stolen notebooks can cost companies millions of dollars in compromised proprietary information and threaten consumers with the high cost of identity theft, yet many computers remain unprotected. According to the United States FBI, a notebook computer is stolen every 53 seconds and 97% are never recovered*.

Hard drive king Seagate officially confirmed today that it is investing as much as $100 million in a very own line-up of Solid State Drives. Seagate's CEO, Bill Watkins said:

We'd love to have an SSD range, that's why we're investing (as much as $100m), as there are a lot of things that we like about them. But there are also some problems.

The new line-up Seagate is building will try to overcome some of the problems current SSDs have. At present we're aware of SLC (single layer chip) and MLC (multiple layer chip) SSDs, and we know that the latter is cheaper but has reliability issues. Seagate will try to create a new technology that combines both single-layer cell (SLC) and multi-layer cell (MLC) tech, making better, faster and cheaper SSDs, the drives we all want.
Seagate's senior vice president of global marketing Pat King also revealed that the company is working on a network attached storage solution for the home. Unfortunately, that's all the information we have. Hopefully this new line-up will be a big step in the SSD industry.

Seagate, the world leader in storage solutions, today announced the Fall 2008 lineup of the company's award-winning FreeAgent external hard drives. This new generation of the Seagate FreeAgent family includes attractive desktop and mobile options, for both Mac and Windows operated PCs that make it a breeze to back up, share and protect valuable digital content like photos, videos and music.

Seagate today unveiled the industry's first 1.5-terabyte desktop and half-terabyte notebook hard drives to meet explosive worldwide demand for digital-content storage in home and business environments. The debut of the Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB hard drive, the eleventh generation of Seagate's flagship drive for desktop PCs, marks the single largest capacity hard drive jump in the more than half-century history of hard drives - a half-terabyte increase from the previous highest capacity of 1TB, thanks to the capacity-boosting power of perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology.

With announcements coming in from of rolling out Solid State Drives (SSD) and that it would become a prominent player in the SSD business, Seagate is still in requirement of trade relationships with a NAND Flash manufacturer, add to that it doesn't have production facilities of its own.

This has gotten analysts to speculate on where Seagate will source its chips from, a possibility being buying Intel's share of the Intel-Micron JV. Such a buy-out would set Seagate back by close to $1 bn. Another possibility would be to acquire SanDisk or Hynix (Hyundai) which focus on making entry-level solid state drives, but are a major players in the overall NAND flash market. If it will be SanDisk, Hynix or any other flash maker remains to be seen, but it wouldn't come as a surprise if Seagate announces the acquisition of a flash company soon.

In an effort to make data accessible anywhere in our home Seagate today presented Maxtor Central Axis, a network storage drive that can be used by the whole family. The hard drive inside Maxtor Central Axis is a 7200 rpm model with 32MB cache and has 1TB of storage that every computer in the home can back up to or stream at any time. Users connect to the drive via a single gigabit ethernet port, but there are also two USB ports for adding extra peripherals that can be shared across the network along with the NAS storage device. Also because the Central Axis drive is connected to a router and not formatted for an individual computer, files can be accessed and stored from both Mac OS X and Windows operated PCs. Besides that, you can easily log into a remote access service from an Internet browser and securely access or share the files you have stored on the device. There are no applications to download or plug-ins required. Central Axis establishes a secure connection to the service without the need to disable firewalls. All that is needed to access the drive from any Web browser is a username and password. The Maxtor Central Axis 1TB capacity drive is expected to be available in the US in July from major retailers, distributors and online stores, as well as at Maxstore, for a suggested retail price of $329.99. Availability in Europe and Asia will come later this year.

To meet the growing demand for higher-capacity, more efficient enterprise storage systems, Seagate today introduced the Savvio 10K.3 hard drive - the world's highest-capacity, small form factor 2.5-inch enterprise hard drive built for the demands of enterprise servers and storage arrays. This latest generation of 2.5-inch drive offers 70% lower power and greater than 60% performance density over traditional 3.5-inch drives.

Seagate CEO Bill Watkins, outlined yesterday that his company won't release any solid state drives until next year. "SSDs are not price-competitive yet," Watkins said. First Seagate SSDs will start to appear as late as next year, and target only enterprise market. Seagate has no plans to release SSD drives for consumers because of the high prices and other problems that still part solid state drives from conventional hard disks. "If the cost per gigabyte comes down to 10 cents, maybe," Seagate will focus on SSD storage for consumers, Watkins said. But "It will take three to four years for SSDs to come to parity with hard drives," he thinks. In related news, Bill Watkins also announced plans to introduce 2TB conventional hard drive next year. The exact release date and price information for the 2TB hard drive is still distant though.

At NCTA's Cable Show, Seagate Technology announced it will introduce its Seagate Showcase storage solution, a new series of products that extends the storage capacity of your Digital Video Recorder (DVR), so you never have to say goodbye to your favorite movies and television shows. Seagate also announced that the Showcase family of products will be designed to be compatible with Motorola's market leading e-SATA capable high-definition (HD) digital video recorder (DVR) set-top portfolio.

Seagate Technology today announced that its Momentus 7200.3 hard drive, the industry's first 2.5-inch 7200-rpm, 320GB HDD, now powers Dell XPS laptop PCs and will be available soon in select Alienware laptops - making the leading computer manufacturers first to market with systems featuring high-performance 320GB hard drives. Perfect for performance laptops, workstations and small form factor desktop PCs, the Momentus 7200.3 Serial ATA 3.0 HDD features doubled 16MB cache and a free-fall sensor technology, to help prevent drive damage and data loss upon impact if a laptop PC is dropped. The hard drive is also lean on power consumption, allowing notebook users to work longer between battery charges, and are virtually inaudible thanks to Seagate's innovative SoftSonic fluid-dynamic bearing motors and QuietStep ramp load technology. Both Dell and Alienware will update their websites soon to include the new storage option on selected XPS and Alienware notebooks.

Seagate Technology announced today that it is the first hard drive manufacturer worldwide to have shipped 1 billion hard drives - a number not only staggering in size but also emblematic of the massive amount of digital content being created in the home, hand, office, car and dozens of other markets. Consider this: the 1 billion hard drives Seagate has delivered equates to approximately 79 million terabytes, able to store 158 billion hours of digital video or 1.2 trillion hours of your favorite music - and Seagate hard drives and storage solutions enable people to create, share, enjoy and protect more digital content every day.

STEC, a designer, manufacturer and marketer of high performance solid state drives (SSDs), announced today that it has received notice of a patent infringement lawsuit brought by Seagate Technology LLC, Seagate Technology International, Seagate Singapore International Headquarters Pte. Ltd. and Maxtor Corporation in United States District Court, Northern District of California, alleging infringement of U.S. Patent Nos. 6,404,647 (issued in 2002), 6,849,480 (issued in 2005), 6,336,174 (issued in 2002) and 7,042,664 (issued in 2006).

HDD maker Seagate Technology LLC has filed a patent-infringement suit against STEC Inc., a global engineering and manufacturing company for OEM memories and SSD solutions, accusing it of infringing four patents held by Seagate and its Maxtor subsidiary. These patents include solid-state memory storage, memory-backup systems and device self-testing systems. The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco and Seagate seeks STEC to stop further infringement of its patents, and asks for damages and royalties to be awarded for violating the Seagate patents. Seagate didn't disclose any specific financial damages it is seeking from STEC.

This is not about stifling innovation or threats to our business. ... We have an obligation to our company and our shareholders to protect what belongs to them.

, said Seagate Chief Executive Bill Watkins in s statement.

Seagate Technology today also introduced a new breed of hard drive, the Cheetah 15K.6 FDE (Full Disk Encryption) disc drive family, the world's first self-encrypting hard drives for mission-critical servers and storage arrays. As part of the award-winning Cheetah family, the industry-standard in performance and reliability in data centers, the new Cheetah 15K.6 FDE hard drive now also encrypts data as well. And that encryption goes anywhere the hard drive goes - whether it is moved, stored, or retired.

Seagate today announced it has begun worldwide shipment of its 1 terabyte (TB) enterprise-class Barracuda ES.2 hard drives with a Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interface. Applications addressing rich media content and collaborative applications like email can benefit from the average 135% performance boost over SATA-interface drives along with robust enterprise features and native compatibility.

Hard drive manufacturer Seagate has quietly updated its Barracuda 7200.11 series of hard drives to now include a 320GB single-platter HDD. Previously starting at 500GB, the 7200.11 family now includes a 3.5-inch 320GB drive with only one platter (model number: ST3320613AS), which features SATA 3.0 Gbps interface, 16MB of cache (no 32MB version available like the other models) and MTBF (mean time before failure) of 750,000 hours. The drive is said to have a slightly lower noise output and power consumption as well as improved read/write characteristics.

Seagate Technology announced it will begin shipping its new Cheetah 15K.6 hard drive this month. Designed for the world's most demanding enterprise storage environments, the Cheetah 15K.6 drive is Seagate's highest-performance hard drive ever in a 3.5-inch form factor, with a 28% increase in sustained data transfer rates compared to previous generations. With this new performance on tap, the Cheetah 15K.6 drive remarkably consumes significantly less power, using up to 61% less energy in both idle and operational modes.

Strengthening its position in the growing notebook hard drive market, Seagate has announced it is currently shipping a 250GB Momentus 5400.4 notebook drive that delivers a compelling combination of capacity, performance and durability for mobile computing.

Today, Seagate Technology announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire MetaLINCS, a technology leader in the fast-growing E-Discovery market. MetaLINCS's innovative, patent-pending software helps companies respond to litigation and regulatory issues that require them to search large volumes of electronic data for relevant information. MetaLINCS will become part of the Seagate Services Group and support its mission to help business customers protect and manage valuable company information. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Seagate is advising those who have purchased a Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 hard drive since August 2007 to check them, if they haven't already, for viruses. Some 3200 drives may have came preloaded with a Virus.Win32.AutoRun.ah virus right out of the box. The malicious code is searching for passwords to online games (World of Warcraft included) and sends them back to a server located in China. It can also disable virus detection software. In order to determine whether your drive is preloaded with this virus, feel free to phone Seagate with the serial number in hand, or update your anti-virus software with the latest definitions.

Seagate Technology, the world's largest maker of hard drives, said Monday it is shuttering one of two manufacturing facilities in Northern Ireland, resulting in a cut of 780 employees, about 1.5 percent of the company's global work force. The company is closing a 10-year-old plant in Limavady in County Derry that manufactures substrate materials used in disks for hard drives, Seagate spokesman Woody Monroy said. Monroy did not know how much money the company would save from the move but said it is part of Seagate's ongoing effort to streamline operations. "It's no longer competitive from a business standpoint" to keep the Limavady plant open, Monroy said.

Following false advertising by Seagate with regards to hard drive capacities, overstating capacities by 7% due to the differences between a gigabyte and a giga binary byte (both of which are commonly abbreviated to 'GB'), the company is now required to reimburse customers with either a 5% cash benefit for drives purchased between 22nd March 2001 and 1st January 2006 or a software benefit in the form of a free copy of Seagate Software Suite for drives purchased between 22nd March 2001 and 26th September 2007. To get the cash benefit customers must visit the settlement website and fill out the mail-in form, and to receive the software benefit customers must fill in an online form. This offer is only applicable to hard drives purchased as a discrete unit and not hard drives in pre-built computers.

Seagate has finally started shipping its Momentus 5400 PSD 2.5-inch hybrid hard drive to OEMs. The drive will be available in 80, 120, and 160GB capacities with a SATA 1.5 interface, 8MB of cache, and 256MB of flash memory to buffer cached write requests to disk. Seagate's HHDs are said to reduce boot time from 40 to 32 seconds while cutting average power consumption from 0.78 to 0.45 watts. However, Melissa Johnson, a Seagate product manager, says the sub-par performance for all HHDs stems from first generation issues with both the BIOS and Vista device drivers because they do not know how to properly utilize the flash memory.

Seagate today also launched several other storage devices; the 250GB Momentus 5400.4 2.5-inch notebook hard drive, and the first encrypting 1TB desktop PC drive. Momentus 5400.4 is designed for a wide range of systems including mainstream notebook PCs, workstations, external storage enclosures and small form factor desktop PCs. This 2.5-inch SATAII, 5400-rpm drive delivers up to 250GB of capacity on just two platters using perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology. Next in the list is the Barracuda FDE (full disc encryption) 1TB hard drive, the world's first 3.5-inch desktop PC drive with native encryption to prevent unauthorized access to data on lost or stolen hard drives or systems. Seagate also unveiled new Maxtor OneTouch products. The new Maxtor OneTouch 4 family includes: Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus, OneTouch 4 Mini, and OneTouch 4. Momentus 5400.4 is expected to ship in the fourth quarter of calendar 2007, while the Barracuda FDE is on track to ship in 2008. The Maxtor OneTouch 4 family is available now - with the exception of the 1TB OneTouch 4 Plus, which is scheduled to ship in late October. Please visit Seagate.com for more information.

Seagate Technology today announced its Cheetah 15K.6 hard drive, the newest generation of Seagate's award-winning enterprise Cheetah family. Built for the most demanding transaction-intensive enterprise servers and storage systems, the Cheetah 15K.6 is the highest-performance hard drive ever in a 3.5-inch form factor, with a 28% increase in sustained data transfer rates compared to its previous generation drives.