Tech Olive

A while ago, Seagate launched the Barracuda LP, which was a low-powered hard drive for the environmentally friendly. This time, the company has launched its successor, the Barracuda Green. We must say it’s not the most unique of names (we’re looking at you, Western Digital), but it does server its purpose. Seagate calls it the highest performing eco-friendly desktop hard drive in the world by making it low-powered without sacrificing much performance. It spins at 5,900RPM and uses the company’s own SmartAlign technology to enable the benefits of the new 4K sector standard. It’s available now in 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB flavors. A 6Gbps option is available for the 1.5TB and 2TB models.

[Press Release], [Product Page]

Today Seagate announced what they say is the industry’s first 2.5-inch enterprise-class hard drive to boast a whopping 1TB storage capacity. The Constellation.2 series of hard drives from Seagate sport a 6Gbps interface with the option to go with either SATA or SAS and also come in 250GB and 500GB flavors. Seagate says the new drive will ship with Dell machines later this month.

[Press Release via Twitter]

Wow. Wouldn’t this have been the mergers of all mergers. According to Bloomberg, sources who wished to remain anonymous have said that Seagate was offered a takeover proposal from rival Western Digital back in October, but it ended up being rejected. The sources said that Seagate was also offered another proposal from TPG Capital, which reportedly put $7.5 billion on the table. However, it’s said that Western Digital offered anywhere from 10- to 50-percent more than TPG Capital.

According to the sources, this would have been a bad idea if the merger did in fact take place. There would have been way too much product overlap, as well as antitrust obstacles and possibly management departures. Obviously, neither company wanted to comment on the matter.

via [Bloomberg]

A while back, we reviewed Seagate’s Pogoplug-based FreeAgent DockStar. It’s a simple device that turns any external hard drive into an all-out NAS. Turns out this simple device contains a 1.2GHz Marvell ARM processor, 128MB of RAM and 256MB of ROM, as well as the three USB ports, gigabit Ethernet, and the AC power plug. Now, this isn’t the first time the DockStar has been fooled around with, but one hacker by the name of Hunter Davis turned his DockStar into a gaming machine and even a general purpose PC. He simply added on a copy of Debian Linux, a DisplayLink USB-to-VGA adapter, a USB sound adapter and soon he was playing games like Warcraft, Monkey Island 3, Ratchet and Clank, and Super Mario World. All of this from a device that you can buy for a measly $25. Watch a video of the hacked DockStar in action after the break.

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Here we are, folks. We have here the smallest 1TB hard drive on the planet currently in our hands. I can literally stick this in my back pocket. It’s not really called the Slim Edition, but we’re giving it that name until the excitement wears off and discover that “slim” no longer is “slim,” but rather the standard. For now though, we’ve been studying this thing inside and out. Find out what we think of this super-slim terabyte device after the break.

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After we heard about the slimming down of Seagate’s 1TB GoFlex drives, we were anxious to get our hands on one and experience what it felt like to carry around a terabyte in the back of our jeans pocket. Needless to say, it felt pretty good. The drive comes standard with USB 3.0, which is great, and if you don’t have USB 3.0 yet, no worries. The drive is backwards-compatible with USB 2.0. The only thing that turned us off was the super-reflective, glossy finish, which as anyone knows is a magnet for fingerprints, as well as any dust flying around. However, we did like the matte finish on the bottom.

Look out for our review of this bad boy in the coming days, but for now enjoy a couple of photos.

Seagate’s had a 1TB portable drive out for over a year now, but that one used three platters, making it more plump than its less-capacious siblings. The new slimmer 1TB GoFlex Ultra-Portable Drive now uses only two platters, which means it conforms to the standard 9.5mm thickness of a normal laptop hard drive. Say what?!

Previously the max capacity per platter was 375GB. This time Seagate has stepped it up to a whopping 500GB per platter. Granted, we should have easily seen this coming when Seagate announced their 1.5TB GoFlex a few weeks back, which has three platters of 500GB each. It was only a matter of time until their two-platter 1TB drive came along.

As always, we’ll have a hands-on session and reviews with both the 1TB and 1.5TB up shortly!

[Press Release]

We knew this day would come eventually. Once the industry reached the 1TB mark, it was only a matter of time before 1.5TB would be the pinnacle. Seagate today announced the world’s first 1.5TB portable external hard drive. Adding onto their portable GoFlex line, this 1.5TB model does all the same things that a GoFlex drive is known for; interchangeable transfer cables and the ability to write on both PCs and Macs. However, we’re interested to see what kind of speeds this  baby can deploy.

The 1.5TB portable GoFlex drive comes with a USB 3.0 adapter and is out now in the U.S. for $250. It will be available later this year globally.

[Press Release via Twitter]

UPDATE: If you want in on one of these bad boys, Seagate is giving away a 1.5TB GoFlex drive with USB 3.0 and Paramount movies on board, as well as an Asus Eee 1018P netbook equipped with USB 3.0. Head on over to their blog to enter!

Seagate’s desktop version of its GoFlex external drive lineup brings all of the unique features that we saw on the GoFlex ultra-portable drive — interchangeable interfaces and the ability to write to both Mac and PC. The GoFlex Desk even comes in a 3TB flavor, which is the first and only 3TB hard drive on the market right now. We decided to delve into this 3.5″ external beast and see what it can do.

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You might recall when we reviewed Seagate’s GoFlex ultra-portable drive, as well as the GoFlex Net media sharing device. We’re here once again to continue the GoFlex saga to bring you the GoFlex TV HD media player. This little guy plugs right into your television and plays any videos, music, or photos that you have stocked on your GoFlex drive or any other USB external hard drive.

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