Granted, lawsuits don’t often settle for the amount proposed, and the lawsuit isn’t just about the data. But it’s another step up the monetary value ladder for personal information.
An individual, not a class action suit
What’s extraordinary is that this is an individual. Until now, the ”scandals” around personal data loss have related to personal records from thousands or millions of individuals. I’ve posted several times on these events - here and here, for example.
Encrypted laptops are the future
The clear message: data on laptops needs to be secure! Seagate’s got a take on this - check it out.
What’s your data worth? How much would you sue for the information on your PC? Let’s compare notes.
More from Jean Charles Compagnon, IT manager for APEX IT. Making deals on airplanes, Oracle demos via laptop, outfitting billable employees vs. non-billable staff, selective security.
Slow-motion video shows a laptop disk drive ”bracing” for a fall
What’s the one irreplaceable piece of a notebook computer? Any data that’s not backed up. The latest in laptop data protection is a zero-G sensor that automatically parks a hard drive head whenever a laptop goes into free fall.
This is an extremely slow-motion video of an actual disk drive head being parked as the drive falls. The drive spins at 7200 rpm, which is seen here as very slow rotation. Note the bounce at the bottom!
More facts about the zero-G sensor and the G-Force Protection feature on Seagate’s Momentus 7200 drive:
It is fast enough to protect in drops as little as 7 inches
It senses in 3 axes, allowing it to “feel” head-over-heels tumbles as well as a simple vertical drop
The drive is plug-compatible with standard laptop drives, and requires no configuration to enable the feature
I ran out of room on my laptop the other day. I’m pumped!
That’s kind of why I’m starting this blog.
It’s not that I like unplanned interruptions and computer problems. OK, it’s more of a nuisance than a problem really. But Disk Cleanup and compression only bought me time. One of these days I’ll have to go to IT and submit to The Process to get a bigger drive for my two-year old machine. Not looking forward to that.
What turns my crank is that I’ve never run out of space before. I’m not a Luddite, but I’m not a leading edge techno-guy either. If I can fill my drive at work, then it’s probably happening to a sizable group of others. What are you seeing?
It’s one thing to run out of space at home with family videos, movies, etc. But this is office stuff (mostly). I know what put me over the edge, too: free downloads of NBC season pilot edisodes on Amazon Unbox. Something to watch on a business trip to Portland. One click each, totally free. Just like that, 4 GB.
Make no mistake, as a Seagate employee I know this trend is good for business. In fact, the demand for drives today is outpacing what all six of the world’s disk drive manufacturers combined seem to be able to get out the door.
But the bigger deal to me is that data and storage are moving up the value chain. It’s not about bits and bytes; it’s changing the way we get through the day. If you’re a system builder and you’re still selling storage the way you did 5 years ago, as a commodity component buried on your Bill of Materials, you’re missing the boat.
Do you see a change in your customers around storage? Are you getting more for your solutions because your customers need more storage, and more ways to manage and protect their information? Are YOU running out of space?
