Seagate outs a fleet of cloud, wireless and super-thin hard drives

Seagate outs a fleet of cloud, wireless and super-thin hard drives


If getting your digital life better organized is tops on your list of New Year's resolutions, Seagate has a trio of options that cover all the bases. First, the company is offering its ultra-thin 7mm drive in portable form with the appropriately named Seagate Seven. As you might expect, the company boasts that this is "the world's slimmest" device for on-the-go storage, wielding 500GB of space and connecting to your gadgets via USB 3.0 inside a steel enclosure. The Seven certainly won't take up much space in your pocket or backpack, and it's set to arrive later this month for $100.

Prefer a wireless option for wrangling files? No worries: There's something for you, too. Seagate Wireless is another 500GB portable drive, but as the moniker indicates, this one cuts the tether to play nice with mobile devices. Aiming to cure the limited-space woes on phones and tablets, this multihued model creates its own network, so there's no need to worry about finding WiFi along the highway. Files are managed via Seagate's Media app for iOS, Android, Kindle and Windows 8, and what's more, stored media can be beamed to a big screen with Airplay, Chromecast or with the company's app for smart TVs and Roku players. Expect five color schemes when the $130 Wireless hits shelves in February.

What's that? You need a more comprehensive storage solution for all of the family's digital clutter? Seagate is ready to sort that too, and its Personal Cloud setup makes sure that stuff is accessible both at home and on the go. Keeping downloaded media in one place to watch on tablets, TVs and media streamers? Check. Serving as a central backup for laptops and other essential gadgets? It does that as well. Heck, it can even stream your content to DLNA-based wares like a PlayStation or Xbox console. Personal Cloud also handles backups of Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon and other cloud repositories, and there's a two-bay model that's configured to copy all data to the second drive for folks looking to be extra careful. And yes, you can turn it into one big storage space if you prefer. There's no word on pricing just yet, but Seagate Personal Cloud will wrangle 3TB, 4TB and 5TB capacities while the two-bay version will handle 4TB, 6TB and 8TB, with both scheduled to ship before the month's end.