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Tag: Seagate

  • Seagate Cutting 3,000 Jobs, Accused of Selling to Huawei

    Seagate Cutting 3,000 Jobs, Accused of Selling to Huawei

    Seagate is facing bad news on two fronts, with the company cutting 3,000 jobs and facing accusations of violating US export restrictions.

    Seagate is one of the leading computer storage makers, but has been impacted by the economic downturn and lessening demand for personal computers. According to Bloomberg, the company is cutting 3,000 jobs as a result.

    “Global economic uncertainties and broad-based customer inventory corrections worsened in the latter stages of the September quarter, and these dynamics are reflected in both near-term industry demand and Seagate’s financial performance,” said Chief Executive Officer Dave Mosley. “We have taken quick and decisive actions to respond to current market conditions and enhance long-term profitability, including adjusting our production output and annual capital expenditure plans.”

    Potentially far worse for the company are accusations that it illegally sold hard drives to Huawei. Huawei is one of the companies the US Commerce Department has blacklisted over allegations it serves as part of Beijing’s spying apparatus. According to Reuters, Seagate was served a “proposed charging letter” from the Commerce Department over the alleged violation.

    Seagate maintained in a filing that its hard drives are not covered by the export restrictions, and it is therefore not guilty of violating US law.

    Only time will tell if Seagate’s position is correct, but the company clearly has some issues to address.

  • Samsung Introduces The World’s Thinnest 2TB Hard Drive

    Samsung Introduces The World’s Thinnest 2TB Hard Drive

    The 2.5-inch hard drive is the standard used by small laptops and other small computing devices. Even game consoles like the PS3 and upcoming PS4 use them. The only problem is that these devices can’t take advantage of 1.5TB and 2TB 2.5-inch drives because they’re too tall. Samsung is fixing all of that today.

    Seagate’s Samsung HDD division announced today that it’s shipping the new 2.5-inch Spinpoint M9T to OEMs and retail. The drives are only 9.5mm tall and come in 1.5TB and 2TB flavors. It’s a major win for those who want more storage in smaller devices as 2TB 2.5-inch hard drives generally come in at 15mm tall and that’s much too tall for the drive bays of laptops and game consoles.

    “The M9T combines the highest areal density shipping in a single storage device with an innovative design that fits into mainstream notebook applications. While other 2TB are solutions on the market are 15 mm thick, the vast majority of mobile devices are designed to use a 9.5 mm drive; with the M9T, those devices can now have 2TB of storage, enabling a richer computing experience,” said Dave Frankovich, senior product line manager, Samsung HDD.

    As was the case with Samsung’s Spinpoint M8 drives, the M9T features a 5400 RPM spin speed, SATA 6Gb/s interface support, SilentSeek and NoiseGuard. There’s no price available for the drives just yet, but I’d ballpark the 2TB drive around $200.

    The Spinpoint M9T is a pretty big deal for laptops, but it’s an even bigger deal for PS4 owners. Sony uses the SATA 2.5-inch HDD standard for its next home console, but the company is shipping the PS4 with a measly 500GB HDD. Many PS4 games will require upwards of 50GB to be installed to the HDD and that will take up all your space pretty quickly. With these new drives, you’ll be able to store up to four times the amount of games than what’s possible on a 500GB HDD.

    If you don’t need that kind of storage right away, you also might want to wait. Other HDD vendors will no doubt come out with their own 9.5mm 2TB HDD solutions next year to compete with Samsung, and those drives might just end up being cheaper.

    [Image: Seagate/BusinessWire]

  • Seagate to Acquire Paris-Based LaCie

    Seagate to Acquire Paris-Based LaCie

    Seagate is a company with you may be familiar with through their partnerships with Apple. Apple stores in the United States sell storage systems made by the company. Seagate serves business and enterprise customers for the most part and does very little in the retail end of business.

    Today Seagate has announced its intention to Acquire Paris-based company LaCie, also a provider of digital storage systems. The purchase will help Seagate build up its consumer-based offering and expand the company into countries were the brand currently has very little reach.

    Rocky Pimentel, Seagate’s chief marketing officer comments on the acquisition of LaCie:

    “LaCie developed channels that Seagate has not adequately served, especially Japan, where it’s tough to compete if you are not a (domestic) company,”

    “It will help take us to a whole new level. LaCie is a premium brand.”

    Seagate purchased a controlling share of LaCie for $186 million. The purchase comes at a critical time, as consumer demand has grown for external storage solutions with the rising popularity of digital imaging, and other data creation. By joining forces the two companies will have the financial resources and technology to capitalize on upcoming technology trends.

    Pimentel explains:

    “The financial resources we have will enable them to be aggressive in ways they could not previously afford.”

    “This is more about future market opportunities than the present,”

    “It will allow us to build adjacent storage services and related products for the consumer and small-business market.”

    Currently Seagate is controlling about 65% of LaCie, but they have plans to buy up more as soon is the deal is approved by the government.

  • Seagate Achieves 1 Terabit Per Square Inch Hard Drive Storage

    Seagate announced today that it became the first hard drive maker to achieve the storage density of 1 terabit per square inch. The company claims the technology will double the storage capacity of today’s hard drives upon its introduction later this decade. This means 3.5-inch hard drives may store up to 60 terabytes in the next 10 years.

    Seagate used a next-generation recording technology it calls heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) rather than the current technology, Perpendicular magnetic Recording (PMR) to achieve this feat.

    “Hard disk drive innovations like HAMR will be a key enabler of the development of even more data-intense applications in the future, extending the ways businesses and consumers worldwide use, manage and store digital content,” said Mark re, senior vice president of Heads and Media Research and Development at Seagate.

    As Seagate explains it:

    “Hard drive manufacturers increase areal density and capacity by shrinking a platter’s data bits to pack more within each square inch of disk space. They also tighten the data tracks, the concentric circles on the disk’s surface that anchor the bits. The key to areal density gains is to do both without disruptions to the bits’ magnetization, a phenomenon that can garble data. Using HAMR technology, Seagate has achieved a linear bit density of about 2 million bits per inch, once thought impossible, resulting in a data density of just over 1 trillion bits, or 1 terabit, per square inch – 55 percent higher than today’s areal density ceiling of 620 gigabits per square inch.”

    While it’s fascinating that hard drives will be improving so vastly in the near future, it’s not really unexpected, and Seagate has always been an industry leader when it comes to hard drive storage and speed. What I want to see is a hard drive large enough, durable enough, and safe enough to install as a cyber-brain.

  • Seagate Drives Hit 1 Terabit Per Square Inch

    Seagate has unveiled the first terabit-per-square-inch hard drive, essentially doubling the typical areal density of modern hard disks. First off, this will result in 6TB 3.5-inch desktop drives, and 2TB 2.5-inch laptop drives – but Seagate expects to expand to 60TB and 20TB drives respectively.

    To have made such a big advance in drive density, Seagate incorporated a technology called heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR). The size of each magnetic bit in a hard drive dictates its size – these bits can only be made so small before the magnetism of other bits begins to take effect. HAMR bits are made of compounds that can withstanding further miniaturization. Fujitsu developed HAMR in 2006, and the system adds a laser to the hard drive head. The drive head seeks as normal, but when it is time for data to be written, the laser comes on.

    seagate hamr

    Data is read in the conventional fashion. One terabit per square inch is roughly two million bits per linear inch, with each site being about 12.7 nanometers long – or about a dozen atoms. Theoretically, HAMR should accomodate areal densities of up to 10 terabits per square inch, which equates to 60TB, for a desktop hard drive. There’s no mention of the cost of HAMR drives, or about how the laser would affect power consumption.

    Still, one might wonder what the point of local storage will become, as cloud-based storage and computing advances. But 60TB local drives, coupled with 100Mbps internet connections might also make the idea of a cloud a bit pointless as well. Though, the latter is unlikely, as smartphones and tablets with flash memory, in tandem with cloud drives might eventually make mechanical hard drives obsolete for typical computing.

  • Seagate Adds Netflix And YouTube Access

    Seagate Adds Netflix And YouTube Access

    Storage solutions firm Seagate said today that it will allow users of its FreeAgent Theater+ HD media player to access content from Netflix, YouTube, vTuner and Mediafly.

    The new content offerings are available to existing FreeAgent Theater+ HD media player owners through a free, firmware update that can be downloaded from Seagate, and will be included in all future product shipments.

    The FreeAgent Theater+ HD media player allows users to view collections of photos, movies and music saved on a FreeAgent Go portable device or any other USB-connected storage device.

    Seagate-Netflix

    "FreeAgent Theater+(TM) HD media player plays an important role in the evolution of how people are now enjoying digital media," said Dave Mosley, executive vice president, Sales, Marketing and Product Line Management at Seagate.

    "We first envisioned this product as a way to move highly valued family photos and videos from the PC environment to the home entertainment center, but it has now become much more. The combination of access to local storage and streaming media playback with access to a wealth of online content makes the FreeAgent Theater+(TM) HD media player a valuable addition to modern home entertainment systems."