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Data Storage Hardware

Seagate and Maxtor Show Off New Stuff To Bloggers 46

Posted by CowboyNeal from the hot-platters dept.
Doggie Fizzle writes "Seagate held an event for bloggers and other media in the NYC area yesterday and rolled out some of their new items for show and tell. DAVE, the battery powered portable hard drive for WiFi/Bluetooth phones was being demoed. Some of the new FDE series of laptop and desktop drives with full (hardware based) disk encryption were on hand. And Maxtor's fourth generation of OneTouch external drives were on display and available to take home."
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Seagate and Maxtor Show Off New Stuff To Bloggers More

Seagate and Maxtor Show Off New Stuff To Bloggers

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  • No risk of data corruption if you forget to charge it or otherwise let the battery run low, eh?

    Naw. Not at all...

    Still, a cool idea, I suppose. But another device to carry around with you; unless you leave it in the glove box (can it run on a DC supply?) and, perhaps, use your phone (with the, perhaps built-in, FM transmitter) as an audio headend in the car.

    Sorry for the run-on and any grammar issues. Actually, I'm not. It happens. Deal. And no, I did not RTFA; as I've said alot lately, I'm not that new her

    • Re:Battery powered hard drive? (Score:5, Funny)

      by suv4x4 ( 956391 ) on Thursday September 06, 2007 @09:52PM (#20502381)
      No risk of data corruption if you forget to charge it or otherwise let the battery run low, eh?
      Naw. Not at all...

      Shit, I knew it we forgot something! Thank you, smart Slashdot reader!

      - A Seagate engineer.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Uhhh Bill, this is Jim. yea... that part I was supose to work on never really made it into the final spec's so... he might have a point. -The Other Seagate engineer.

    • Re:Battery powered hard drive? (Score:4, Informative)

      by QMalcolm ( 1094433 ) on Thursday September 06, 2007 @09:58PM (#20502439)
      It won't be perfect in its first generation but I think tech like this is eventually going to take off. People want convergence (look at the iPhone), but they also don't like all their gadgets being locked in. Imagine having a small wireless hard drive that stored your email contacts, phone numbers, music collection, etc. Your Ipod gets your music, your phone can browse your numbers (and you'd never have to delete voicemail, it could just be stored on the disk). There'd be tons and tons of cool uses for something like this once it matures.
      • I already store music, photos and critical reference files on my phone using SD MMC memory cards and a USB adapter to fill up the cards. The capacities seem to get bigger every time I walk in to the store. (Okay, like many slash-dotters, I don't get out much)

      • Re:Battery powered hard drive? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) * on Friday September 07, 2007 @05:38AM (#20505135) Journal

        People want convergence
        I would settle for it just working.

        Actually, I'm not so crazy about convergence. It wouldn't even occur to me to use my phone to listen to music or watch videos, in fact. Or play games. At most, I want my phone to hold...phone numbers. And addresses, and a simple calendar - maybe.

        And I really don't want convergence into a device that costs a fortune. I use my bicycle a lot more than I use my car, and I know from experience that shit will happen. So my mp3 player is one of those 39 dollar 2 gig Sansdisk iPod killers (Fry's) that won't set me back too far if the headphone cord gets caught on the brake lever and pulls the thing out of my pocket and it bounces off the street and under a bus.

        Actually, this has happened and it's still working. I wonder how an iPhone would have fared?

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by whit3 ( 318913 )
          > ... it bounces off the street... I wonder how an iPhone would have fared?

          The canonical answer, in convenient video form, is here:

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Intron ( 870560 )
      "No risk of data corruption if you forget to charge it or otherwise let the battery run low, eh?"
      Seagate DAVE is conventional rotating disk, it's not volatile storage. Circuitry for shutting off writes during power-up and power-down is standard on hard disks and flash drives.

  • Solid State Drives? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jennifer York ( 1021509 ) on Thursday September 06, 2007 @09:56PM (#20502423) Homepage
    What is their timetable for solid state disks? I'm really hoping my next laptop has no moving parts...

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by maxume ( 22995 )
      If it isn't a problem for your wallet, the future is now:

      http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000927.h tml [codinghorror.com]

    • Re:Solid State Drives? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by epiphani ( 254981 ) <epiphani&dal,net> on Thursday September 06, 2007 @10:31PM (#20502699)
      Agreed, I don't really care about much else out of storage vendors these days either.

      I want cheep, fast solid state. I don't care how big it is as long as it will plug into a sata or scsi slot and is at least 16 gigs. I can get huge magnetic drives for my large media; I want power-efficient, quiet and fast.

      I would replace my laptop and all my non-primary-storage server drives with those in a heartbeat.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by p0tat03 ( 985078 )
      I don't really get the fuss about solid state. There are the constant claims that a spinning platter in your computer is inherently dangerous, but honestly, I have NEVER had a problem with my iPod, nor any of my laptop's drives. The battery consumption is certainly nice though.
      • It's not about long term data; not mostly anyway. It's about accessing it faster. Ssd speeds are around parity to hds now.

        They can basically keep up to 7200s, but use less power while emitting less heat and noise with lower latency. Once they hit higher distribution rates prices will drop and better tech will come out.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by NMerriam ( 15122 )

        I don't really get the fuss about solid state. There are the constant claims that a spinning platter in your computer is inherently dangerous, but honestly, I have NEVER had a problem with my iPod, nor any of my laptop's drives. The battery consumption is certainly nice though.

        The fuss is about speed and battery life. i don't know where you got the idea anyone was concerned about "dangerous" hard drives in 2007 -- unless you're using your laptop on a pogo stick, the built-in shock protection locking featu

    • "I'm really hoping my next laptop has no moving parts..."

      So in other words, you want a laptop that also has a capacitance keyboard, no DVD drive, and no hinges?

      (no, no; I know what you mean...)

  • yessydO ecapS A : 1002 (Score:4, Funny)

    by BrunoBigfoot ( 996441 ) on Thursday September 06, 2007 @10:10PM (#20502527)
    Charge my batteries, Hal.

    I'm sorry, I can't do that DAVE.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by pipingguy ( 566974 ) *

      DAVE: I'm going to auto backup your files now, Dave.
      Dave: No, don't do that right now, DAVE, I'm compiling.
      DAVE: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
      Dave: Open the drive bay door, DAVE.
      DAVE: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
      Dave: What's the problem?
      DAVE: Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.
      Dave: Where the hell'd you get that idea, DAVE?
      DAVE: DAVE's not here, man.
  • or am I the only person who is suddenly reminded of M$ Bob.
  • But does it run Linux? Err wait. Yes, it does......
  • All 2001 jokes aside... seriously. When can I purchase a DAVE? Either from Seagate or from whatever branding company contract they have set up. Jeeze, I want some awesome bluetooth storage for my Nokia 770! I can store lots of music and video and stuff, perfect for when I travel. I did some searching and couldn't find anything related for sale... Stop showing it off and start selling it!

    Just sell it to me already! I can't even get one of those BluOnyx things yet either.

    Hopefully, somebody will respond by sa
    • I have been designing that concept for the past fricken month. That sucks. oh well. Atleast it proves the idea was worthwhile.

  • Digital Wallet anyone? (Score:3, Informative)

    by dwater ( 72834 ) on Thursday September 06, 2007 @11:58PM (#20503329)
    DAVE sounds awefully like a Digital Wallet which I had several years ago. It had a PCMCIA interface for you to plug cards into, but it was incredibly useful. It used Firewire for connection to the PC so was very fast too (faster than DAVE, probably). It was only 6GB though.

    I guess that was ahead of it's time. It worked wonderfully for me.

    IIRC, it was produced by a company called "Minds At Work" - which seems to be http://www.mindsatwork.net/ [mindsatwork.net], but it isn't loading for me (I'm in China, so it's not unusual) :| Is it still around?

    Ah, here's DPReview's page on it : http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/digitalwallet/ [dpreview.com]

    It's a shame when good products don't make it, only to be successful later for some other company :(
    • Nope, from the page:

      The company Minds@Work is no longer in business.

      This site contains no information on Minds@Work company and is not run by them.

      This site was created so that the current owners of the DigitalWallet and MindStor can gain access to the latest drivers, firmware and manuals. All of the manuals have been moved to a Yahoo Group. You will also find the Mac format drivers there as well.

  • The New Stuff I'm waiting for (Score:4, Interesting)

    by LS ( 57954 ) on Friday September 07, 2007 @02:43AM (#20504351) Homepage
    is reliable drives. Most HDs are garbage now. I don't have any statistics to back this up, but the quality of drives seems to have gone down in the last few years. I don't expect hard drives to last more than 2 or 3 years now. How about working on the quality of your 3.5" magnetic drives, instead of putting all your effort into hype-filled cell phone external bullshit drives, you assholes. Tons of people have lost so much valuable personal and commercial data. Anyone who's gone through a failure without any backups knows the sickening feeling, and it can actually send people into depression. I'm wondering if anyone has actually committed suicide because some fucking suit over at Maxtor decided to sacrifice quality for for a few cents in manufacturing and QA costs.

    LS

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by TheThiefMaster ( 992038 )
      Actually, they sacrificed reliability for capacity, speed AND price. People buy as big a drive as they can afford, from of whoever offers the largest, not paying attention to how reliable it is. OEMs are the same. The only people who really care about reliability buy special server/raid class drives, and they really pay for them.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by LS ( 57954 )
        Once you start quoting John Wayne, well, you know, you've already lost. Not backing up is stupid for sys-admins, but let's talk about your mom and dad. It's like saying that not buying a second car is stupid because car quality has gone down. Have you taught your parents how to do backups yet? It's not as easy as it sounds. I've had to write a complex shell script to only backup important files because I can't afford to buy a second hard drive to mirror the whole thing. And why should we have to mirro

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Intron ( 870560 )
      Since it's cheap and trivial to buy two drives and mirror them, why would you be losing data? Disk Manager instructions:

      2. Right-click disk 0, which contains the boot and system files, and then click Add Mirror.
    • New Maxtor HDD's come with a 5 year warranty. And they are actually Seagate drives. By the way, Seagate purchased Maxtor last year.

      Anyone who's gone through a failure without any backups knows the sickening feeling, and it can actually send people into depression

      Lesson: Back Up Your Data buddy! I learned this lesson once the hard way myself, with a paper due in the morning. And I was pissed not depressed. I came to terms with the situation after re-writing 30 pages.

  • Results 1 of 1,530,000 for onetouch problems (Score:3, Informative)

    by Archon-X ( 264195 ) on Friday September 07, 2007 @03:28AM (#20504541)
    These drives are the devil.
    I bought one. It exploded spectaculally. I rang 'Maxtor' [ie Seagate] - they didn't want to have anything to do with it.
    3k in data recovery later. This seems to be a common scenario, I know of two others failing on friends - just google.

    This may not be the case for all of their drives - but 'Buyer Beware'

  • OK, Seagate has announced (again) that they'll have full disk encryption. The last vaporware announcement went nowhere and, in the interim, I chose to use Flagstone [stonewood.co.uk] drives when I needed full disk encryption in hardware.

    Now, just maybe Seagate is going to produce a real product that I can buy. Does anyone want to take a stab at comparing/contrasting the tech used by Seagate and Stonewood? The biggest desktop Flagstone drive is 80 gigs and I'd love to have something as trustworthy in a larger size.

    A bu

  • Just curious as to the view of /.ers..

    I use TrueCrypt quite a bit and, generally, love it. I store a VM inside a TrueCrypt volume (using twofish encryption) and notice practically no slowdown in performance. Backing up volumes, drives, etc, is as simple as copying a big file elsewhere. Mounting this volume is done via keystroke shortcut. enter my 15 char password, and blammo, it's up and running.

    With hardware encryption I would have to fall back on utilizing software encryption for any network backups th

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