Seagate launches 10 new hard drives, including 8GB 1-inch model for handhelds

Seagate announced several new disc drive models today, including hard drives for the automotive market, a 2.5-inch drive for DVRs and game consoles, and a 8GB drive for portable media players. Seagate also introduced the first 2.5-inch drives utilizing perpendicular recording, high capacity external and portable hard drives, and the first drives with Full Disc Encryption. In all, the storage company announced ten new products.

The EE25 Series is a hard drive designed specifically for use in cars, a hard drive with extreme environmental resistance that can operate in temperatures from -30 to 85 degrees C and in high-humidity and high-altitude environments. Seagate sees the drive as an ideal choice to deliver the capacity needed for auto makers, system manufacturers and aftermarket companies to create DVD-free navigation systems and high-quality car entertainment services.

The ST1 Series (pictured) is the first 8GB 1-inch hard drive designed for use in handheld and CompactFlash applications. It will let users store large libraries of music (200 hours - or 4,000 songs), video and digital photos. The ST1 Series supports low-power modes, and the drive's time-to-ready is a mere 1.2 seconds.

Seagate's LD25 Series is the first 2.5-inch hard drive designed for game consoles, and smaller, cooler-running and more cost-effective small footprint PCs and home entertainment devices. Seagates says the drive's power consumption specs are ideal for low-power systems and add-on storage device requirements, and its quiet operation is ideal for digital media setups.

The DB35 Series comes with a new 500GB capacity models for DVR and home entertainment systems. It will provide up to 85 hours of High-Definition TV recording, 500 hours of standard TV recording, and up to 10 simultaneous TV streams.

Still for the CE market, the 8GB CompactFlash Photo Hard Drive provides 8GB capacity in 1-inch size for digital cameras, bringing the possibility of storing 2,400 high-resolution (6 megapixel) and 6,400 standard-resolution (3 megapixel) digital photos.

For the laptop market, Seagate will bring the Momentus 5400.3, the first 2.5-inch notebook drive utilizing perpendicular recording. Seagate's new 160GB disc drive will combine higher 5,400-rpm performance with 25 percent more capacity than the largest notebook drive currently available.

The Momentus FDE offers hardware-based full disc encryption technology, providing strong protection against unauthorized access to data on stolen or retired notebook PCs. FDE technology requires only a user key to encrypt all data, not just selected files or partitions, on the drive.

For desktop computing the New Barracuda 7200.9 combines 3GB/s SATA-interface throughput with 500GB of capacity, 16 Mbytes of cache and Native Command Queuing (NCQ).

The company is also bringing some external hard disc drives to the market. The new Seagate External Hard Drive comes with 500GB of capacity. Seagate will also introduce a FireWire 800 (IEEE 1394b) interface for the external hard drive, capable of supporting data rates up to 800Mbps.

The Seagate Portable External Hard Drive provides 120GB capacity, with a FireWire (IEEE 1394a) option.

Seagate is shipping limited quantities of the Seagate 8GB ST1 Series and the Seagate LD25 Series now to select OEM customers. The Seagate 500GB DB35 Series will ship this summer. The Seagate EE25 Series will ship this fall. The Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 and the Seagate 120GB Portable External Hard Drive will start shipping later this summer. The Seagate 500GB External Hard Drive will ship this fall. The Seagate Momentus 5400 FDE and the Momentus 5400.3 will ship this winter.