Where Is Seagate?
After checking out all the product news on the storage scene, our first thought was to wonder what Seagate was doing while WD and Samsung were redefining the market. Seagate has traditionally been the leader when it comes to new hard-drive developments, but has let its rivals take the spotlight this year. Sure, Seagate released an updated Barracuda 7200.12 family earlier this month, but that was just a 500GB/platter refresh that currently tops out at 1TB. Part of this is due to the quality-control challenges Seagate is having with its popular Barracuda 7200.11 line, going so far as to issue a public firmware update, and the rest can be attributed to the company falling behind in some very key areas. While Western Digital has been diversifying its products into four distinct desktop groups (Blue, Black, Green, and Raptor), and Samsung is working out a similar strategy, Seagate’s Barracuda 7200 series is its lone desktop entry. That just doesn’t cut it in 2009.
