Today at the National Association of Broadcasters Convention, LaCie, the premium brand from Seagate Technology plc, announced the LaCie 12big Thunderbolt 3, a professional 12-bay desktop RAID storage unit. With up to 96TB of capacity, the breakthrough performance of Thunderbolt 3 and RAID 5/6, the LaCie 12big helps video professionals meet the data demands of 4/5/6K cameras.

At up to 96TB, the LaCie 12big boasts a 50 percent higher capacity than any other desktop direct attached storage solution on the market-with a footprint smaller than a tablet. It features Seagate's enterprise-class drives with a five-year limited warranty for extraordinary reliability and data availability to safely store and edit massive amounts of ultra hi-res footage.

Seagate Technology plc today unveiled a production-ready unit of the fastest single solid-state drive (SSD) demonstrated to date, with throughput performance of 10 gigabytes per second (GB/s). The early unit meets Open Compute Project (OCP) specifications, making it ideal for hyperscale data centers looking to adopt the fastest flash technology with the latest and most sustainable standards. The 10 GB/s unit, which is expected to be released this summer, is more than 4GB/s faster than the previous fastest-industry SSD on the market. It also meets the OCP storage specifications being driven by Facebook, which will help reduce the power and cost burdens traditionally associated with operating at this level of performance.

"Your data is only as good as how easily you can access it and put it to use," said Brett Pemble, Seagate's general manager and vice president of SSD Products. "Seagate is committed to providing the full spectrum of technologies to help meet the diverse needs of organizations so they can unlock this value. Whether for consumer cloud or business applications, this SSD will help improve on demands for fast access to information, where split seconds drive incremental value gains." The technology would work with any system that supports the Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) protocol, which was developed by Seagate and other consortium vendors to replace the legacy Serial AT Attachment (SATA) standards and eliminate informational bottlenecks. NVMe helps reduce layers of commands to create a faster, simpler language between flash devices.

This week on TechPowerUp News: New AMD CPUs and APUs hit the stores; Seagate served a class-action lawsuit over false reliability claims of its hard drives; and more details of AMD "Zen" architecture.

Hard drive major Seagate has been hit with a class action lawsuit, accusing it of abnormally high failure rates for its 1.5 TB and 3 TB internal and external/portable hard drives. It also accuses the company of false claims over "reliability" and "dependability" in its marketing.

The lawsuit cites data aggregated by cloud solutions company Backblaze. According to this data, a 3 TB Seagate hard drive is three times as likely to fail, as a Western Digital (WD) 3 TB hard drive. It's also ten times as likely to fail as a Hitachi drive. The data appears to look at percentage failure rate, and not raw failed drive volumes, so market-share and volumes shipped by each company is not relevant. Seagate is yet to respond to the lawsuit.

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today launched its first 10TB enterprise capacity hard disk drive (HDD), merging high capacity with the industry's lowest power and weight available in a 10TB drive, to meet the growing storage requirements for private and public cloud-based data centers. The Seagate Enterprise 3.5 Capacity HDD has been selected by enterprise market leaders globally for its ability to address storage demands unlike any other technology in the industry.

"Cloud-based data center storage needs are expanding faster than many current infrastructures can sustain, rendering the capacity demands of users a herculean task for cloud managers," said Mark Re, senior vice president and chief technology officer, Seagate. "Built on our years of research and development of sealed-drive technology, our new helium-based enterprise drive is designed precisely to help data-centric organizations worldwide solve the needs of their growing storage business."

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today announced the launch of the Seagate NAS HDD 8TB, the world's highest-capacity drive optimized for RAID, Network-Attached Storage (NAS) and server storage. These reliable, scalable drives address the ever-growing data challenges for the Small- and Medium-sized Businesses (SMB), Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) and creative professional segments.

The Seagate NAS HDD 8TB is the largest NAS optimized drive on the market. That means businesses will require fewer drives-and subsequently fewer expensive enclosures-to meet their data storage needs. The new 8TB drives are designed for tower enclosures with one to eight bays, delivering up to 64TB in a single eight-bay desktop form factor. This high storage density gives small business the high capacity and flexibility to address the data challenges on the immediate horizon while preparing for the future.

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today announced the launch of the Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim, the world's thinnest 2TB mobile hard drive. This new product builds on the award-winning Backup Plus Slim drive, delivering a stunning new design with the same leading capacity in an even slimmer profile. The Backup Plus Ultra Slim also includes 200GB of Microsoft OneDrive cloud storage and Lyve software compatibility, so users can back up, access and share their favorite files from any device or location.

"The launch of the Backup Plus Ultra Slim builds on Seagate's rich history of award-winning innovation to give users even more capacity in an incredibly small form factor," said Tim Bucher, vice president for Seagate's Consumer Group. "Based on our breakthrough ultra-mobile hard drive technology, this new storage solution gives them a better way to manage the increase in both data volumes and number of devices."

Today, LaCie, the premium brand from Seagate Technology plc unveiled the LaCie Chromé desktop storage. Complete with forward-thinking USB 3.1 Gen 2 technology, USB-C connectivity and SSDs, it is the fastest USB storage solution on the market. Housed in a visionary aluminum enclosure by Neil Poulton, this innovative drive blends leading technology with design to create a product that shines from the inside out.

To maximize the USB 3.1 Gen 2 10 Gb/s potential, the LaCie Chromé features a pair of 500 GB M.2 SATA SSDs in RAID 0. Working together, these components deliver speeds of up to 940 MB/s to handle serious, bandwidth-intensive applications. This performance lets users ingest two hours of 4K GoPro footage in a little over one minute, makes architectural and 3D modeling tasks smoother and faster, and enables the editing of hi-res video without first needing to convert footage to a lower resolution.

LaCie, the premium brand from Seagate Technology plc and Porsche Design Group (Porsche Lizenz- und Handelsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG) today announced a new line of LaCie Porsche Design Drives. Housed in sleek all-aluminum enclosures that reflect the signature Porsche Design style, the new Mobile and Desktop Drives feature forward-thinking USB-C connectivity with the highest capacities on the market in a compact form factor.

The LaCie Porsche Design Drives offer the new USB-C connector for next-generation computers like the latest MacBook. This feature makes the drive incredibly easy to connect, since both ends of the cable are identical and the connector is reversible. As a result, there is no wrong way to connect the drive to a USB-C computer. The drives also deliver fast transfer speeds, so users can drag and drop files and perform backups quickly. Plus, they are compatible with standard USB 3.0 (Type-A) ports thanks to the included adapter cable.

Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ: STX), a world leader in storage solutions, today announced that its Global Markets & Customers organization will be aligned under Dave Mosley, President, Operations and Technology, effective immediately. Mr. Mosley will continue to report to Steve Luczo, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

"I'm looking forward to working with Dave over the next several years as we continue to optimize Seagate in a way to best serve our expanding global customer base. Seagate's focus on operational efficiency in our global high technology manufacturing facilities and design centers has benefitted our storage technology portfolio, competitive position and financial performance," said Mr. Luczo. "Given these positive results, we are extending this operational efficiency into Seagate's market-facing functions to help further align our structure. We expect the transition to be seamless, as Dave has previously managed Seagate's sales, marketing and product management functions."

Rocky Pimentel, Seagate's President of Global Markets and Customers will remain with the company as Executive Vice President and report to Mr. Luczo. Mr. Pimentel will have responsibility for a number of strategic projects within the company and will continue to serve on selected boards.

When speed matters in high-performance computing (HPC) storage, Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ: STX) and Newisys have the industry's fastest flash storage design. The two companies today announced that 21 Newisys NSS-2601 with dual NSS-HWxEA Storage Server Modules deployed with Seagate's newest SAS 1200.2 SSD drives can be combined in a single 42U rack to achieve block I/O performance of 1TB/s with 5PB of storage. Each Newisys 2U server with 60 Seagate SSDs is capable of achieving bandwidth of 49GB/s. Newisys is a division of Sanmina Corporation (NASDAQ: SANM) and a leading provider of data center products for enterprise and cloud applications.

"This is one of the highest storage densities ever achieved in the industry, and holds the potential for new breakthroughs in storage system performance," said Brett Pemble, VP and general manager of flash products, Seagate. "Our partnership with Newisys enables us to continue to innovate with how storage is architected." Applications that might benefit most from this flash solution include those where microseconds matter in processing massive amounts of data. These applications might include metadata caches for large data centers, as well as prediction models for financial markets, oil and gas, and weather that are constantly changing and in need of pushing the performance envelope in a constant race against time.

Seagate Technology plc. today introduced ClusterStor A200, a first-of-its-kind tiered archive storage system for high performance computing (HPC). The A200 helps reduce storage and operational costs by up to 50 percent compared to tier-one storage platforms.

The A200 was designed to complement the rest of Seagate's ClusterStor family of scale-out storage systems. It allows customers to non-disruptively migrate designated data off of the performance-optimized, primary storage tiers while keeping it online for fast retrieval. This avoids a common problem in shared HPC environments where the organization is forced to choose between having all of the data available to make the best analysis versus the time required to retrieve data from tape. Performance of the primary storage is often improved by migrating data and freeing up space for more efficient data layout. The pre-configured ClusterStor A200 solution includes an automatic policy-driven hierarchical storage management (HSM) system and near limitless scale-out capacity.

Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ:STX) today announced that its Board of Directors has approved a 17 percent increase in the company's targeted regular cash dividend. The targeted annual dividend will increase from $2.16 to $2.52 per share and will continue to be paid quarterly. The first payment at the new quarterly rate of $0.63 per share is scheduled to be paid on November 20, 2015 to shareholders of record as of the close of business on November 6, 2015. The declaration and payment of any future quarterly dividends will continue to be at the discretion of the Board of Directors and will be dependent upon Seagate's financial position, results of operations, available cash, cash flow, capital requirements and other factors deemed relevant by the Board.

"Today's increase in our dividend targets reflects our confidence in Seagate's ability to continue to generate sustainable operating cash flow and maintain a strong balance sheet," said Steve Luczo, Seagate chairman and chief executive officer. "This is consistent with our capital allocation priorities we have previously articulated, including returning cash to shareholders through dividends and share redemption."

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today announced it has completed its previously announced acquisition of Dot Hill Systems Corp., a trusted supplier of innovative software and hardware storage systems.

Under the terms of the definitive agreement signed between Seagate and Dot Hill, an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Seagate commenced a tender offer for all of the outstanding shares of Dot Hill in an all-cash transaction valued at $9.75 per share, or a total of approximately $696 million on a fully-diluted equity value basis.

The tender offer and the second step merger contemplated by Seagate's definitive agreement with Dot Hill were completed on October 6, 2015. As a result, Dot Hill has become an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Seagate and will no longer be listed for trading on the NASDAQ Global Market.

Thecus today announced the addition of Seagate's 8TB Enterprise 3.5 hard drives to its compatibility list. By incorporating Seagate's 8TB HDD, Thecus NAS users will be able to maximize storage capacity while experiencing enhanced performance and reliability.

Boasting the industry's best response times for 8TB Drives, the Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD leverages comprehensive advanced caching technology to reach unparalleled data transfer speeds. Other advanced technologies including PowerBalance, PowerChoice, and Raid Rebuilt enables users to customize their big data requirements and optimize TCO.

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today unveiled its new portfolio of 8TB high capacity drives - the Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD, Seagate Enterprise NAS HDD and Seagate Kinetic HDD. The new drives provide small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises with the world's highest capacity, most reliable, and highest performance storage solutions available, all optimized to match the unique storage requirements for each market segment.

"Customers today need storage solutions to support a diverse, and sometimes very specialized, set of applications and workload requirements," said Scott Horn, vice president of marketing at Seagate. "In designing our products, we look closely at the type of data being stored, performance needs, power requirements, environmental operating conditions, network topologies, uptime demand and more, to ensure our customers receive the right storage technology for the job. This thoughtful approach has enabled us to deliver the most compelling 8TB portfolio available in the industry."

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today announced it has achieved a major milestone in areal density with a new hard disk that can offer as much as 2 TB of capacity in a slim 7 mm package. This achievement is significant because in final product form it will give OEMs freedom to design a new generation of elegant mobile products that are extremely thin and stylish, light-weight, fast, power-efficient and cost-effective.

"In an industry first, our engineers have been able to boost areal density to 1 TB per platter in a 2.5-inch form factor, which will give OEMs the flexibility to design and build virtually any kind of mobile device they can envision, with plenty of storage to boot," said Mark Re, Seagate's chief technology officer. "Combining new mechanical firmware architectures, with state of the art heads, media and electronic design, this technology is a real game changer- providing four times more capacity than a 0.25 TB SSD at a substantially lower cost."

Seagate introduced a 750 GB variant of its Seven mm line of ultra-slim portable hard drives. Bearing the model number STDZ750100, the drive offers an unformatted capacity of 750 GB, while retaining the dimensions of its 500 GB sibling. Its dimensions of 82 mm x 122.5 mm x 7 mm are made possible by using the drive's metallic cover itself as the body on one side, with an insulating metal sheet making up its side-brace and bottom lid. The drive's logic board is seamlessly connected to its USB 3.0 host interface, with a single cable handling both power and host connectivity. The company didn't disclose pricing. The 500 GB variant continues to be priced at $99, so this variant could cost more.

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today announced at Gamescom the new 2TB Game Drive for Xbox, the result of a strategic marketing relationship with Microsoft. This new external drive is designed to complement the Xbox color scheme and is set up for an easy plug-and-play connection with an Xbox One or Xbox 360 gaming console.

"With all of the new and amazing titles expected for this holiday season and a ton more games coming in the future, Xbox gamers will need even more storage and portability," said Matt Kesselring, business development manager for Microsoft's designed for Xbox partner program. "Microsoft is privileged to be working with Seagate as our trusted partner for this important designed for Xbox peripheral."

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today announced the availability of the 1200.2 Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) Solid State Drive (SSD). The Seagate 1200.2 SAS SSD is the first product to result from a strategic alliance between Seagate and Micron Technology, Inc., announced in February 2015.

"Enterprise and cloud users face record growing storage demands challenging the performance of their IT systems to churn through mass amounts of data, while being restricted by opex/capex expenditure limits," said Brett Pemble, vice president of flash products, Seagate cloud systems and electronics solutions. "As our partners and customers depend on Seagate flash technologies to meet these challenges, we are leveraging our collaboration and innovation with Micron to exceed their expectations."

The framework established between Seagate and Micron has led to the development and production of this next-generation, high-capacity SAS SSD platform. It is the first 12 gigabits-per-second (Gb/s) SAS device to optimize dual channel throughput with up to 1800 megabytes-per-second (MB/s) sequential reads and offer multiple endurance choices within a single hardware and firmware design. These advantages engineered for the 1200.2 SAS SSD ensure it will deliver ultra-fast performance to match the needs of specific enterprise applications and workloads.

Seagate Technology plc today reported financial results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2015 ended April 3, 2015. For the third quarter, the Company reported revenue of approximately $3.3 billion, gross margin of 28.7%, net income of $291 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.88. On a non-GAAP basis, which excludes the net impact of certain items, Seagate reported gross margin of 28.9%, net income of $357 million and diluted earnings per share of $1.08. For a detailed reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results, see the accompanying financial tables.

During the third quarter, the Company generated approximately $374 million in operating cash flow, paid cash dividends of $176 million and repurchased approximately 12 million ordinary shares for $706 million. Year to date, the Company has returned approximately $1.4 billion to shareholders in dividend and stock redemptions. Cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash, and short-term investments totaled approximately $2.6 billion at the end of the quarter.

Today, Micron Technology, Inc. announced a new addition to its expansive portfolio of flash storage products, providing a purpose-built solution for cost-sensitive consumer applications seeking high performance and reliability. The new TLC NAND is built on their 16-nanometer (nm) process and delivers a balanced set of features for applications like USB drives and consumer solid state drives. The market appetite for TLC is projected to be strong throughout 2015, constituting almost half of the total NAND gigabytes shipped.

Micron's 16 nm process-recognized by TechInsights as the Most Innovative Memory Device and 2014 Semiconductor of the Year-is a mature and proven storage technology, making it an excellent foundation for a reliable TLC design. TLC, or triple-level cell, is a technology that fits three bits in every flash data cell, creating greater cost and size efficiency. Customers of the technology will benefit from Micron's extensive design support team, who act as trusted advisors to ensure smooth qualification and optimal end-solution performance. Key flash customers and ecosystem partners worldwide have already begun working to integrate this new NAND with their latest designs, ensuring quick adoption in end applications.

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, announced it is integrating IBM Spectrum Scale software with its ClusterStor High Performance Computing (HPC) storage to deliver a new software defined storage appliance. The new appliance will help users manage the demands of data-intensive workloads, such as genomic research, computer aided design, digital media, data analytics, financial model analysis and electronic design simulations.

"The newly engineered system will bring the capabilities of IBM Spectrum Scale together with the unique performance efficiency and scalability of Seagate's ClusterStor systems, helping clients to manage demanding, data-hungry high performance computing applications more efficiently than before," said Ken Claffey, vice president and general manager, Seagate HPC systems business. "To do so, we are building on the Seagate core, extending innovation from the device into the information infrastructure, both on-site and in the Cloud."

Samsung HDD, a division of Seagate Technology, today announced 4TB M3 Portable and the P3 Portable external hard drives, which are the first 4TB USB-powered single drive solutions to come in 2.5" cases in the world.

"Previously only attainable in desktop or bulky multi-drive internal designs, we can now achieve a 4TB capacity in a compact drive thanks to the latest Samsung HDD technology," said Dave Klenske, director of product line management, Samsung HDD. "By going to a single drive solution, we can power the drive through just a USB connection while fitting it into a case that is only a 1/10 of an inch thicker than our 2TB drive. They are the perfect lightweight drives for notebook computer owners who need to access media collections too large to fit on traditional internal storage options."

Russian cyber-security company Kaspersky Labs exposed a breakthrough U.S. spying program, which taps into one of the most widely proliferated PC components - hard drives. With the last 5 years seeing the number of hard drive manufacturing nations reduce from three (Korean Samsung, Japanese Hitachi and Toshiba, and American Seagate and WD) to one (American Seagate or WD), swallowing-up or partnering with Japanese and Korean businesses as US-based subsidiaries or spin-offs such as HGST, a shadow of suspicion has been cast on Seagate and WD.

According to Kaspersky, American cyber-surveillance agency, the NSA, is taking advantage of the centralization of hard-drive manufacturing to the US, by making WD and Seagate embed its spying back-doors straight into the hard-drive firmware, which lets the agency directly access raw data, agnostic of partition method (low-level format), file-system (high-level format), operating system, or even user access-level. Kaspersky says it found PCs in 30 countries with one or more of the spying programs, with the most infections seen in Iran, followed by Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Mali, Syria, Yemen and Algeria.