* First 2.5-inch hard drive using perpendicular recording
* First hard drive with Full Disc Encryption for strong data security
* First 8GB 1-inch hard drive for new handheld capacities
* Breakthrough hard drive designed specifically for automobile applications
Further expanding what is already one of the industry's broadest product lines by delivering groundbreaking new hard disc drives, Seagate (NYSE:STX) today announced several breakthroughs to enable the most compelling new applications for storage, including hard drives for the automotive market, the first 2.5-inch drive for DVRs and game consoles, and the first 8GB drive for portable media players. Seagate also wielded its significant technology lead to introduce innovations for the computing market including the first 2.5-inch drives utilizing perpendicular recording, the highest capacity external and portable hard drives, and the first drives with Full Disc Encryption for robust protection of users' personal data. In all, the storage giant announced ten new products that build on its impressive array of disc drives for consumer electronics, enterprise, desktop and mobile computing markets.
With its leading investment in research and development, unique strengths in platform technology and design, and superior operational flexibility and leverage, Seagate is the category leader with a unique ability to address the future of storage in multiple applications and market segments - from CE to Enterprise. The diverse applications addressed and the myriad technology advances included in the Seagate announcements underscore how pervasive storage has become in everyday life and how demand for storage has skyrocketed.
"Our storage innovations are driving the infusion of exciting new capabilities into applications of all kinds, from the home to the office to the road and beyond," said Seagate president and CEO, Bill Watkins. "Seagate's unique, unflagging ability to meet the demands of both the consumer electronics and traditional computing markets is why we are the industry's leading seller of hard drives and why some of the biggest brands in the world partner with Seagate."
New Consumer Electronics Drives
Seagate's innovations for CE include new offerings designed to enable applications for the emerging "terabyte life," where digital storage is creating exciting new products and even new lifestyles. From automobiles and entertainment, to home theater, handheld audio, video, communications and computing, Seagate's new consumer electronics offerings include:
* The EE25 Series — a breakthrough hard drive designed specifically for use in cars, the world's first hard drive with extreme environmental resistance that can operate in temperatures from -30 to 85 degrees C and in high-humidity and high-altitude environments. With the industry's most stringent design for ruggedness, durability and protection from hostile environments, the drive will be an ideal choice to deliver the massive capacity needed for auto makers, system manufacturers and aftermarket companies to create DVD-free navigation systems and high-quality car entertainment services.
* The ST1 Series — the first 8GB 1-inch hard drive designed for use in handheld and CompactFlash applications. It will let users store the industry's largest libraries of music (200 hours - or 4,000 songs), video and digital photos for this class of product. Seagate's unique RunOn Technology improves performance while in a high-vibration environment, such as jogging. The ST1 Series supports low-power modes, and the drive's time-to-ready is a mere 1.2 seconds.
* The LD25 Series — the first 2.5-inch hard drive designed for the latest game consoles, and smaller, cooler-running and more cost-effective small footprint PCs and home entertainment devices. Today's home technology must come packaged in system designs that fit style criteria as much as they support technology requirements. Increasingly, this means smaller, thinner, lighter systems that require smaller form factor hard drives. The drive's power consumption specs are ideal for low-power systems and add-on storage device requirements, and its whisper-quiet operation will deliver pure enjoyment of digital media.
* The DB35 Series — with a new 500GB capacity - the industry's highest - for DVR and home entertainment systems. It will provide up to 85 hours of High-Definition TV recording, 500 hours of standard TV recording, and up to 10 simultaneous TV streams. DynaPlay Technology fine-tunes the drive's operating parameters for entertainment applications, including performance for uninterrupted digital media, security to enhance fair use of digital programming, and power to give manufacturers more leeway in selecting cost-efficient power supplies and keep internal temperatures under control.
* The 8GBCompactFlash Photo Hard Drive — with a new, unmatched 8,000 MB capacity in a tiny 1-inch size for digital cameras. Capable of storing 2,400 high-resolution (6 megapixel) and 6,400 standard-resolution (3 megapixel) digital photos. It will be sold through select retail outlets.
Mobile/Notebook Drives
More users are replacing aging desktop PCs with fast, high-capacity notebook computers. Higher capacity, performance and stronger data security are key drivers of this trend. Seagate's new products in this space will deliver new capabilities in all three areas, including:
* Momentus 5400.3 — the first 2.5-inch notebook drive utilizing perpendicular recording. Seagate's new 160GB disc drive will combine higher 5,400-rpm performance with 25 percent more capacity than the largest notebook drive currently available. The entire disc drive industry will eventually need to transition to the new perpendicular recording technology, and with this announcement, Seagate has now stated its claim to be there first.
* Momentus FDE — Seagate will offer hardware-based full disc encryption technology on its new Momentus FDE family of hard drives, providing the industry's strongest protection against unauthorized access to data on stolen or retired notebook PCs. FDE technology requires only a user key to encrypt all data, not just selected files or partitions, on the drive.
Desktop PC Drives
* The New Barracuda 7200.9 — combining 3GB/s SATA-interface throughput - double that of first-generation SATA - with 500GB of capacity, 16 Mbytes of cache and Native Command Queuing (NCQ). The new flagship drive in the Barracuda family, the most popular PC disc drives in the world, will provide higher performance, capacity and the quietest operation in a desktop PC hard drive.
External Drives
Today's expansion of Seagate's family of external hard drives focuses on new interfaces and capacities, including:
* The new Seagate External Hard Drive — the first external drive with 500GB of capacity from a major hard drive maker. Seagate will also introduce the new FireWire 800 (IEEE 1394b) interface for the external hard drive, the fastest FireWire ever, capable of supporting data rates up to 800Mbps.
* The new Seagate Portable External Hard Drive — with an enormous 120GB capacity - the most in its class. In addition, for the first time the Seagate Portable Drive will offer a fast FireWire (IEEE 1394a) option, for robust, on-the-go storage.
"With the expansion of its product line both last year and this, Seagate has shown it is very agile at customizing its technology to fit ever more unique and varied application needs," said Mark Geenen, president of leading market research firm TrendFOCUS. "Seagate's new product line addresses the requirements of more markets than ever before, from automobiles to expandable DVRs, from portable entertainment to high-transaction small-footprint server systems. By designing products for new markets based on specific customer needs, using its ability to leverage underlying technology platforms across markets, Seagate has pioneered a new way of thinking about and designing hard drives."
Seagate is shipping limited quantities of the Seagate 8GB ST1 Series and the Seagate LD25 Series now to select OEM customers. The Seagate 500GB DB35 Series will ship this summer. The Seagate EE25 Series will ship this fall. The Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 and the Seagate 120GB Portable External Hard Drive will start shipping later this summer. The Seagate 500GB External Hard Drive will ship this fall. The Seagate Momentus 5400 FDE and the Momentus 5400.3 will ship this winter.
For more information on Seagate's new products, visit http://www.seagate.com.
