Technologizer » Seagate

Seagate Plugs Into Pogoplug for FreeAgent Go

Harry McCracken — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 01:34:31 +0000

A few months ago I reviewed Pogoplug, a gizmo that lets you connect USB drives directly to the Internet for access from anywhere. I said the best thing about it was the slick, simple service that let you get to your files from any browser. Seagate seems to like the Pogoplug service, too: It’s announced DockStar, a dock for its FreeAgent Go portable hard drives that you connect to your router via a Gigabit Ethernet port. Presto–your FreeAgent is on the Internet, along with up to three other drives via the DockStar’s USB ports. It uses PogoPlug’s service, letting you share folders or entire drives full of photos, videos, and other items across the Net–either to the world at large or to specific friends who you grant access.

Here’s what Pogoplug’s service looks like in your browser (this image is a rerun from my earlier review):

The DockStar looks sleeker than PogoPlug’s own bulky wallwart hardware and costs the same–$100. If you’ve got a FreeAgent Go and are intrigued by Pogoplug’s capabilities, this is the one to get.

In separate Pogoplug-related news, the company has announced a new social networking feature that lets you publish photos and videos to Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. The content stays on your hard drive so there are no limits to capacity, resolution, or length, and you can use Pogoplug’s authorization features to turn access to your stuff on and off at any time.

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Share School Gadget Thoughts, Win a 500GB Drive

Harry McCracken — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 21:29:12 +0000

Quick reminder: We’re still collecting your reflections on gadget you used (or use) for schoolwork, and the ones you wish you had (or have). Share your thoughts by 5pm PT tomorrow and you might win a nifty 500GB Seagate FreeAgent Go portable hard drive.

Read what folks have said so far and enter here.

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Talk About School Gadgets, Win a Half-Terabyte of Portable Storage

Harry McCracken — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:39:22 +0000

[UPDATE: The contest is over--thanks to everyone who entered. We'll announce a winner shortly; if you have a comment here, you're in the drawing.]

Hey, it’s back-to-school time! I’m just glad I’m not going back to school myself, and I’m kind of amazed that it’s here already–back in the day, I don’t remember school starting until September. But we’re going to celebrate by giving away a snazzy 500GB Seagate FreeAgent Go Special Edition portable USB hard drive to a lucky member of the Technologizer community. (No, you don’t need to be a student at the moment to win it.)

The drive is a $169.99 value, has a red aluminum case (as shown at left), and comes with a docking station, and is provided courtesy of Seagate. I certainly would have found it useful in college, when I stored my data on 72KB floppy disks, although I seem to remember cranking out most of my papers on an electric typewriter–at least it had a built-in correction feature.

To enter, respond to this message in the comments and tell us about the gadgets you found (or find) most essential for high school or college–and/or the ones you wish you had but didn’t (or don’t). Please fill out the e-mail address field so we can contact you if you win the FreeAgent–it won’t be displayed publicly, and we won’t use it for anything other than conveying the happy news to you. (If you’re logged in as a WordPress.com user, you won’t have to enter your e-mail address–just make sure that the address associated with your WordPress account is current.)

We’ll close this contest at 5pm PT this Friday, August 21st 2009, choose a winner at random, and notify that person by the following Monday, August 24th. If you’re shy, you can also enter by dropping us a line with your e-mail address using this form.

Your favorite gadget for classwork could be something like one of these…

Or this…

Or even this…

Or maybe it’s something weird and unexpected.

Good luck and have fun!

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Seagate Ships Firmware Fix

Ed Oswald — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:56:13 +0000

Just in from Seagate: “Seagate has isolated a potential firmware issue in limited number of Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives and related SATA drives based on this product platform, manufactured through December 2008 … Seagate is offering a free firmware upgrade to proactively address those with potentially affected products. This new firmware upgrade corrects compatibility issues that occurred with the firmware download provided on our support website on Jan. 16.” Customers affected are being urged to check this support page.

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Seagate to Fix Hard Drive Problems Soon

Ed Oswald — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 17:15:06 +0000

The hard drive company, which has seen its share of troubles due to the weakening economy, has another issue to worry about: failing hard drives. Users of its Barracuda 7200.11 desktop hard drive, as well as several other models including the DiamondMax 22 and other drives in the Barracuda line have been experiencing issues.

A bug in the firmware of these drives is causing them to either fail or lock-up. While data is not getting erased, it is rendered inaccessible to the user in some cases. Estimates of a rate of failure have approached 30%, although Seagate argues that it is not anywhere near that.

Seagate will offer free data recovery services to affected users through its i365 subsidiary. It also said it should have a firmware upgrade soon for those drives affected, although it looks like it will not bring back any data lost due to the fault.

More information on the exact cause of the issues may be released later today by the company, some news sources are reporting.

If you are one of the unlucky users having problems, either contact the company through the support website, or call 1-800-SEAGATE.

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Seagate’s New Drives, and the Resurgence of the Mac Peripheral Market

Harry McCracken — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:38:25 +0000

Hard-drive kingpin Seagate announced a refreshed lineup of FreeAgent external hard drives yesterday. The new models offer all the stuff you’d probably guess they would: more capacity at lower prices with a redone industrial design. The company also introduced what is, as far as I know, the first USB dock ever offered for hard drives–an optional holder for the FreeAgent Go portable drive line that sits on your desk and lets you plug in the drive without futzing with the cable. (It’s $29 and comes with a case for the drive.)

One of the most intriguing things about Seagate’s announcement is this: It’s expanded its FreeAgent offerings with drives designed specifically for Mac users. Smaller companies such as LaCie have catered to Macheads for years, but this is the first time that Seagate has done so. And the fact that a manufacturer as large as Seagate sees a business opportunity in the Mac market is yet another sign of the Mac’s resurgent good health. (It wasn’t all that long ago that big companies were fleeing the Mac, not catering to it.)

Of course, all of Seagate’s drives are Mac-compatible; I’ve used ‘em with both PCs and Macs for years. So how did it make Mac-specific models?

–It gave the drives dual interfaces–both FireWire and USB 2.0. (FireWire remains slightly exotic in the PC market, but it’s standard on Macs and faster for external storage.) The FireWire interface works with both FireWire 400 and 800, for the fastest possible performance with Macs that have a FireWire 800 port.

–It formatted the drives for Macs using OS X’s HFS+ format rather than FAT32, which Macs can speak but isn’t their native file format. (Mac fans are used to reformatting drives, especially when they want to use ‘em with Time Machine.

–It included the dock and case with the FreeAgent Go models rather than making them extra-cost options–the company told me that Mac users like the feeling they’re getting a premium product–while charging more than it does for the stock versions of the drives across the line
(which also covers the higher cost of the dual interface).

–It put the drives in white-and-silver cases that are similar to those of the stock drives, but a tad more minimalist, in an Apple-ish way.

Interestingly enough, the stock versions of the FreeAgent Go drives have a couple of characteristics that are decidedly Apple-esque and which the Mac versions of the drives don’t match. They’re available in colors: silver, black, red, and blue. (Seagate may see opportunities in the Mac market, but it’s not quite ready to juggle four different colors aimed at Mac users.) And the stock drives are noticably thinner than the Mac ones–which is not a design decision, but an artifact of the Mac drives’ FireWire connectors, which take up more space.

Here’s a comparison of the Mac and stock FreeAgent drives, both of which are sitting in their docks–that’s the Mac one on the left, and you can see that it’s a bit chunkier:

I’m guessing that some Mac users will choose to use the stock drives, since their USB connections work fine with Macs and they’re a bit cheaper. And aesthetically, they’re all good matches for Apple products–the new industrial design, which replaces the quirkier textured-brown plastic look of previous FreeAgent drives, draws lots and lots of inspiration from the Apple way. (I practically expected the packaging to say “Designed by Seagate in Cupertino.)

One other random note from my recent meeting with Seagate. A little under three years ago, the company acquired archrival Maxtor, and since then, it’s maintained both brands, focusing them in different ways that are so subtle I can never remember the distinction. But the company told me that it’s beginning to de-emphasize Maxtor, and left me with the impression that the brand isn’t all that long for the world. Makes sense to me: As useful as hard drives are, it’s tough for one company to package them in two ways that are distinct enough to deserve two different brand names.

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