We simply consume more contents and the contents are increasingly more fatter in size. Not only consuming, we even produce more 4K videos thanks to the increasing 4K video capabilities of the Smartphone and thus a need for higher capacity drives. So increasingly for many 1TB hard drives are not enough to store all their photos, games and music and there is always a constant need for more space. Seagate are known for their high-capacity drives with their BarraCuda Pro desktop drive, the Seagate IronWolf for NAS applications and the Seagate SkyHawk for video surveillance systems. Now bringing them all under one portfolio, the US-based American data storage company has rebranded its product line as ‘The Guardian Series’ catering to the small business and consumer category.
BarraCuda are offered in 2.5″ laptop form factors which is 7mm thick which makes into the ultra think notebooks. While it offers up to 2TB of capacity,there is also a BarraCuda Pro which also has up to 10TB of capacity. The speed, of the resurrected BarraCuda line of hard disk drives, ranges from 5,900rpm to 7,200rpm. It comes with a 5-year warranty. The updated BarraCuda drive line will offer sustained data transfer rates of up to 210MB/s. As far as the pricing, the 2TB models will retail for $81 and the 3TB models will sell for $100.
Next on the Guardian series is the IronWolf brand, which is aimed at NAS devices with one to 16 drive bays and comes with up to 10TB of capacity and Seagate’s AgileArray (formely NASworks) software on it. The IronWolf is rated for up to 180TB of writes per year and the drive can also power down into a sleep mode while not being used. It also comes with a Rescue Data Recovery Service plan that protects against data loss from viruses, software issues, or electrical and mechanical breakdowns in a NAS or RAID environment. Also, Seagate has its in-house ‘Rescue service’ which will attempt to retrieve data from a failed drive, if the customer sends it back to Seagate. The drive has a 3-year limited warranty and is priced at $470.
Completing the trio of high-capacity drives are the new lineup, SkyHawk HDD which is again a rebrand of the previous Sv35 series which is tailor made for video surveillance systems. It has a storage capacity of up to 10TB for storing up to 10,000 hours of HD video. It also comes with ImagePerfect firmware from MTC Technology. The main purpose of the firmware is to power down the drive when not in use in a bid to reduce heat generation and excessive power consumption. The HDD then powers up quickly to provide uninterrupted recording. The 10TB SkyHawk HDD is priced at $460 and it also supports up to 180TB worth of data writes per year and has a three-year limited warranty.]]>