BusinessWeek says it’s stylish, affordable, and simple to use
Simplicity stands out in BusinessWeek’s review of the Seagate FreeAgent Go. So true! The biggest challenge with consumer technology in general remains its ability to be used by normal people.
As digital content moves into every corner of our lives, the winning products will be those that meet us where we are, and don’t try to turn us all into techno geeks.
Categories: Backup · Digital Home · Products
Tagged: BusinessWeek, christmas gift, FreeAgent Go, portable storage, review, Seagate
An up-and-comer for the data-rich crowd?
Chris Meiller over at The Register highlights IQstor’s new storage array, the IQ5200. 52 1 TB drives in 4U. That compares favorably with the Equallogic PS5500’s 48 drives in the same space.
First to qualify 1.5 terabyte drives in these boxes wins the next capacity density crown.
IQStore has been a quiet small OEM supplier up to now. If the IQ5200 pans out in terms of reliability and performance, that may be changing.
Categories: Products · Storage Systems
Tagged: 1 TB, 1.5 TB, Dell, density, Equallogic, IQ5200, IQstor, storage
Seagate recently launched two portable drives with very different personalities. Why? One size no longer fits all. But which drive is right for you?
Seagate FreeAgent Go - a great personal drive. It’s the thinnest portable drive in the world, with up to 500 GB and a desktop dock.
I use the FreeAgent Go for my personal data. I can drop the Go into a dock at work and easily use the files on my work PC. I don’t have to mix my personal and work content, but have access to both.
Maxtor BlackArmor – a great business drive. It’s the safest drive in the world, with government-grade 128-bit AES encryption and up to 320 GB.
I use the BlackArmor for backing up my work files. I keep it at home as a simple disaster recovery scheme. There is absolutely no risk of anyone accessing the data without the password, even if it were to fall out of my bag at a hacker’s convention.
Take your pick!
Categories: Backup · Data Security · Digital Home · Products · Video blog
Tagged: 320 GB, 500 GB, Backup, BlackArmor, encryption, FreeAgent Go, Maxtor, portable storage, Seagate
Get your storage on in 11 colors - straight from Seagate
The new Seagate FreeAgent Go from Seagate has been widely available in four colors.
Now Seagate has expanded the patette to 11 colors – available exclusively on Seagate’s website.
Not a revolutionary thing, but a big step for Seagate. Consumers want choice and convenience, no matter how technical the product’s innards.
Storage can be fun!
Categories: Digital Home · Products
Tagged: colors, FreeAgent Go, portable storage, Seagate, seagate.com
It takes care of data so time-strapped staff don’t have to
Seagate introduced the Maxtor CentralAxis Business Edition, network storage for small businesses. Like its little brother for the home, CentralAxis BE is a game changer.
Unlike traditional storage solutions that are add-on afterthoughts and don’t always work well together, CentralAxis BE puts the content first. It’s a single central storage solution that makes managing the changing demands for storage simpler and safer as a business grows:
Need more space? Add another CentralAxis BE.
At some point you’ll probably need a more complicated solution. You can put your IT department on that task…once your big enough to hire one.
Categories: Backup · Business Solutions · Data Security · Products
Tagged: Backup, Business Edition, CentralAxis, Maxtor, network storage, Seagate, small business
Savvio is the world’s fastest drive - and uses up to 75% less power than 3.5″ drives
Seagate has rolled out a new generation of Savvio 2.5″ enterprise drives. They have better capacity, performance and power efficiency, of course. But the really big news? These drives signal the performance/capacity/power crossover point between 3.5″ and 2.5″ drives.
So for a 24-drive 2.5″ 10K rpm storage system vs. a 12-drive 3.5″ 15K rpm storage system:
Until now, 2.5″ drives had won over the server market but not the storage system market. Lower power 2.5″ drives didn’t make up for the cumulative power impact of packing twice as many drives into a single system. And 2.5″ capacities peaked at 147GB.
No longer! Expect to see accelerated adoption of 2.5″ into high performance storage systems.
Categories: Datacenter · Products · Storage Systems
Tagged: 10K rpm, 15K, 2.5", 3.5", performance, power consumption, Savvio
Style, performance and desktop dock made it their #1 portable drive choice
PC Magazine covered some new ground in their review of Seagate’s FreeAgent Go. Excerpts:
The Seagate FreeAgent Go (500GB) is the portable hard drive to beat. Its innovative dock, stylish design, generous five-year warranty, and included software give you just about all you need from a portable external drive.
Let’s hear from owners this drive. What do you think?
Categories: Digital Home · Products
Tagged: 500 GB, FreeAgent, FreeAgent Go, PC Magazine, review, Seagate
7200 rpm SAS is a secret weapon for content streaming applications
For the first time, the Storage Performance Council is testing components – drive performance in a multi-drive enterprise system. These tests are data center equivalents of PC benchmarks. Until now, SPC has been focused on system-level performance.
The Seagate Barracuda ES SAS drive outperformed the fastest equivalent SATA drive by 8% in the SPC-1C tests (simulating online transaction processing (OLTP) workloads) and by 34% in SPC-2C tests (simulating sequential read/write environments).
SPC-2C is especially interesting, given that it represents fast-growing content streaming applications. These systems are gated by performance and capacity. Unlike OLTP apps that are mostly about performance, and backup/archive apps that are mostly about capacity, content streaming wants to have its cake and eat it too.
Barracuda ES SAS is the first of its kind: a 7200 rpm drive (for capacity) with a SAS interface (for performance). It doesn’t compare to 15K rpm drives in speed of course. Given the price per terabyte difference, that’s OK.
Categories: Datacenter · Products
Tagged: Barracuda ES, Seagate, SPC, SPC-1C, SPC-2C, Storage Performance Council
Going digital is no longer a choice, but it doesn’t have to be scary
Byte and Switch shared with quote from the wife of Thomas Hogan, SVP of HP Software, after seeing his presentation material as he prepared for a conference:
“What is cloud computing and do I need to be scared?”
I don’t blame her! It does sound a bit ominous and intrusive. It reminds me to stop now and then, step back from the technobabble, and think about how this stuff fits into the bigger picture.
This is all the more important as the consumer and technology worlds merge. Going digital is no longer a choice.
Storage, for example, is not gigabytes or access time to most people. It’s photos, movies, and important papers. It’s memories and dreams. The Cloud is connection, insurance and convenience.
We need to adapt our language and even our products as the doors open wide and we bring what we do from behind the curtain to the mainstream world.
Categories: Digital Home · Industry trends · Products
Tagged: Cloud computing, consumer, HP, storage, technology
Seagate’s dockable drive has spawned a new storage category: desktop companion
The Seagate FreeAgent Go is our favorite portable hard drive to date and takes our award for Editors’ Choice. The drive is well designed and fast, and you won’t find a better value for the price.
CNET’s review and video names the Go as their biggest bang for the buck. For me, the dock rocks. It gives the drive a bimodal function: mobile storage (the thinnest drive on the planet) and a desktop drive (up to 500GB – more than enough to act as my PC’s backup drive).
Categories: Digital Home · Products
Tagged: award, CNET, Desktop, dock, Editor's Choice, external storage, FreeAgent Go
