Seagate makes move with new disk line

Hard disk maker Seagate Technology has released a range of new drives to meet business demands for faster access to more data storage space on servers, desktops, notebook PCs and handheld devices.

Analysts estimate that the global market for disk drives is set to grow from 261 million units shipped in 2003 to 380 million units in 2006.

Seagate's NL35 series is a fibre channel component providing 500GB of data storage capacity.

It is designed specifically for use in enterprise storage area networks (Sans) and data centres where high capacity and performance, virtual storage management, and disk/tape-based backup/recovery applications are key.

"Data centres face a growing set of challenges, including satisfying bulk storage requirements, simplifying data management, meeting service levels of high I/O transaction processing applications, managing within existing space constraints and minimising data centre cost per square foot," said Dave Reinsel, programme director of storage research at analyst IDC, in a statement.

Aimed at desktop PCs and local area network servers, the Cheetah 15K.4 focuses on fast data access and reliability with a spin speed of 15,000rpm and quoted mean time between failure rating of 1.4 million hours, with three capacity options of 73GB, 147GB and 300GB.

It will initially be offered with fibre channel or Ultra320 SCSI interfaces, with a faster serial attached SCSI device offering 3Gbps data transfer speeds following before the end of the year.

Roaming workers should soon start to see notebook manufacturers integrating the two-disk 100GB Momentus 5400.2 into their systems, whilst the Momentus 7200.1 is Seagate's first portable drive to feature a 7,200rpm spin speed.

Seagate has also upgraded its external hard drive to provide 400GB capacity.

In separate news, small businesses that need to virtualise their storage resources, but have little money to spend on the implementation of expensive, complex San systems, may find a cost effective alternative in SANMelody Lite.

The $199 software is a souped up version of Windows file sharing that turns any network-attached computer into a hard disk server.

It can split up to 1TB of hard disk capacity into smaller segments, and handle 22,000 disk input/output operations per second to make sure that multiple users have simultaneous access to storage resources.

SANMelody Lite also features an automatic disk mirroring feature that creates backup copies of mission critical data or applications on different hard drives or partitions.