Seagate Ships World’s Slimmest, Portable, External Hard Drive

New Razor-thin, 2.5-inch GoFlex® Slim Drive is the Ideal External Storage Solution for Netbooks and Ultra-thin Laptops

At an ultra-sleek 9mm, the new 320GB Seagate GoFlex Slim drive is roughly the width of a pencil and is available now for under $100. (Photo: Business Wire)

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif.--()--Seagate (NASDAQ:STX) today announced the availability of its new GoFlex® Slim portable hard drive -- a svelte, 9mm, 2.5-inch external drive designed for the latest trend of portable, thin, stylish laptops and netbooks. Initially showcased at the 2011 International Consumer Electronics show in January of this year, the new GoFlex Slim performance drive is now available on www.seagate.com, in-store and at select online retailers. A 320GB version of the GoFlex Slim drive can be purchased for a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $99.99 USD.

At an ultra-sleek 9mm—38 percent leaner than the current GoFlex ultra-portable drives—the new GoFlex Slim drive is roughly the width of a pencil. Sliding effortlessly into a pocket, purse or messenger bag, the GoFlex Slim portable drive enables transport, access and enjoyment of personal digital content from anywhere, making it the perfect complement to today’s mobile lifestyle. Equipped with a 7200RPM drive and a USB3.0 interface to accelerate transfer speeds up to 10x faster than USB2.0, this attractive super-slim drive delivers quick access to large, multi-media files such as HD movies and video games. The faster drive speed takes full advantage of the included plug-and-play USB 3.0 interface, while still maintaining compatibility with USB 2.0 ports. The GoFlex Slim portable drive also allows for use between Windows and Mac® computers, interchangeably, without formatting or performance loss. Additionally, the drive’s included premium backup software provides automatic and continuous backups and encrypts files and folders.

“The continued growth of personal digital media stores, our increasingly mobile lifestyles and the continued proliferation of mobile devices are driving the demand for slimmer, more portable storage solutions,” said Patrick Connolly, vice president and general manager of Retail at Seagate. “Netbooks and slim laptops are great for consuming media, but are limited when it comes to creating and storing high-definition films and photos. With the benefit of using Seagate’s Momentus® Thin drive, the 9mm GoFlex® Slim ultra-portable hard drive breaks through these boundaries—delivering a beautiful, ultra-slim, lightweight storage solution to complement existing mobile computing devices so they can enjoy even more of the content they love, anywhere they want.”

The GoFlex Slim portable drive will also be available in a version for use specifically with Mac OS X computers. The GoFlex Slim for Mac portable drive will be HFS+ formatted out-of-the-box, making it fully compatible with Apple Time Machine® backup software, while maintaining the ability to work across both Microsoft® Windows® and Mac OS X computers. To deliver a fresh look that fits seamlessly with today’s Apple product line, the GoFlex Slim for Mac drive will feature a durable, soft-touch, metallic finish, which is also designed to withstand scratches, fingerprints or other marks incurred from travel. A 320GB version of the GoFlex Slim for Mac drive will be made available in May at Apple retail outlets nationwide for a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $99.00 USD.

“Consumers have a desire to have digital content available at their fingertips. However, in some cases, personal libraries of digital content are exceeding the storage capacity available in notebook PCs,” said John Rydning, IDC’s research director for hard disk drives. “USB attached HDD storage that is capacious, affordable, lightweight, and in a slim form factor will be appealing to many of these consumers.”

According to IDC, tablets, mini-laptops and netbooks are largely seen as secondary PC devices and are primarily used for information “grazing,” or as vehicles of content consumption. Additionally, tablets, mini-notebooks and netbooks have very limited on-board storage requiring them to have access to additional storage, whether it is local attached, networked or from the cloud1. The GoFlex Slim and GoFlex Slim for Mac drives enable people to easily sync files between their computer and the drive, so that they can easily store, transport and enjoy hundreds of DVD-quality movies, hours of digital video, and multiple-thousands of photos or digital music while on-the-go.

About Seagate

Seagate is the worldwide leader in hard disk drives and storage solutions. Learn more at http://www.seagate.com.

© 2011 Seagate Technology LLC. All rights reserved. Seagate, Seagate Technology, the Wave logo, and GoFlex are trademarks or registered trademarks of Seagate Technology LLC or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. When referring to drive capacity, one gigabyte, or GB, equals one billion bytes and one terabyte, or TB, equals one thousand billion bytes. Your computer’s operating system may use a different standard of measurement and report a lower capacity. In addition, some of the listed capacity is used for formatting and other functions and will not be available for data storage. Actual data rates may vary depending on operating environment and other factors. The export or re-export of hardware or software containing encryption may be regulated by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security (for more information, visit www.bis.doc.gov) and controlled for import and use outside of the U.S. Seagate reserves the right to change, without notice, product offerings or specifications.

1 “Tablets: The least of HDD Vendors’ Worries,” John Rydning and David Reinsel, IDC, October 2010.

Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available: http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=6664304&lang=en

Contacts

Seagate
Siobhan Lyons, 202-431-9411
siobhan.m.lyons@seagate.com
Nathan Papadopulos, 831-439-7339
nathan.papadopulos@seagate.com

Release Summary

Seagate (NASDAQ:STX) today announced the availability of its new GoFlex® Slim portable hard drive.

Contacts

Seagate
Siobhan Lyons, 202-431-9411
siobhan.m.lyons@seagate.com
Nathan Papadopulos, 831-439-7339
nathan.papadopulos@seagate.com