14 DAY TRIAL // Seagate Technology announced the launch of a new line of products designed to meet the demands for both increased storage capacities and better data protection. In order to satisfy those demands, the hard disk drive manufacturing company launched a hard drive intended for use in laptops and notebooks with a capacity of 250GB as well as a drive for desktop computers which comes with 1TB of storage room and integrated encryption capabilities. According to Seagate, the encryption capabilities of the desktop HDD are "government-grade" and they should make it impossible for outsiders to access the stored information without the proper passwords.
"Data security has traditionally focused on preventing spoofing, sniffing, eavesdropping, denial-of-service and other threats to data traversing corporate networks and the Internet", said Tom Major, Seagate vice president of Personal Compute Business. "Now that these networks have been hardened and are much more resistant to attack, computer thugs are increasingly targeting the place where data lives" on the hard drive. Seagate is reacting to this threat with the strongest security available for desktop PC information. "The desktop intended hard disk drive is part of the Barracuda family of products and it features something called FDE (full disc encryption) by the manufacturing company, which is a low hardware based encryption method using the AES encrypting protocols, the strongest protocol that is commercially available. Using the FDE drives, users can achieve the maximum possible security for their powered down computer systems, as a pre-boot password will be required at the next start-up, which can be combined with other security measures like biometrics scans. The Barracuda hard disk drive comes with storage capacities up to 1TB and 7200rpm and in addition to the encryption features, the HDD is very easy to wipe clean as all users need to do is delete the encryption key in order to make all the files unreadable".
Another new product from Seagate is a notebook HDD named Momentus which comes with storage capabilities up to 250GB and which is designed specially for users that need large hard disk drives while on the move. The Momentus uses the capacity-boosting perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR for short) technology and it comes with a Serial ATA II data transfer interface and 5400rpm. The 2.5 inch little hard disk drive is able to pack so much storage room on only two platters and in addition it comes with several Seagate technologies which makes it very resilient, as it is able to withstand an operating and non-operating shock resistance of 325 Gs and 900 Gs, respectively, making it ideal for systems that are subject to rough handling or high levels of vibration. Apart from these features, Momentus also comes with energy saving technologies enabled, which makes it a power saver that increases the mobile computer's battery life. Thanks to the innovative SoftSonic fluid-dynamic bearing motors and QuietStep ramp load technology, the Momentus line of hard disk drives is very quiet, even under heavy workloads.
The notebook intended 2.5-inch hard drive, Momentus 5400.4, is expected to ship to retailers and system integrators during the last quarter of 2007, while the desktop intended Barracude FDE drive is on track to ship in 2008.