The EE25 Series drive performed well on a 2006 expedition to Cho Oyu in Tibet.

Operating in sub-zero temperatures at the top of the world or bouncing over the Baja desert in a dune buggy, the Seagate® EE25 Series™ hard drive takes its lumps and comes back for more. It even survives the pounding of frustrated video poker gamblers.

The rugged 2.5-inch EE25 Series drive has a reputation for being tough. And that tough-guy image is helping fuel demand for the drive in automotive navigation systems, military and aerospace gear, video surveillance equipment and more.

The drive can operate in temperatures ranging from minus-30 C (minus- 22 F) to 85 C (185 F) and withstand vibrations of up to 2 Gs (units of gravity). Although originally intended for use in “navitainment” (the auto industry’s term for navigation and entertainment) centers in the family car, the EE25 Series drive is the perfect choice for a wide range of punishing applications.

“These hard drives are in everything from navigation devices in oceangoing vessels to laptops on the battlefield,” said Bill Clark, senior program manager for consumer electronics at Seagate. Clark added that EE25 Series prototype drives have operated beyond their specified maximum altitude of 16,400 feet (5,000 meters).

In 2005, the EE25 Series drive accompanied a summit attempt of Mt. Everest. Although the team stopped short of its goal due to dangerous weather, the climbers made it to 17,500 feet (5,334 meters), returning home with photos of their adventure that were stored on the Seagate hard drive.

And in 2006, an expedition team took the EE25 Series drive to even greater heights—18,600 feet (5,670 meters)—during a summit attempt on Cho Oyu in Tibet, the world’s sixth-highest peak at 26,900 feet (8,200 meters). The team used the drive to check and send email, search the Internet for weather forecasts and update its expedition blog and website—all despite temperatures falling as low as -20F.

“Seagate has the most rugged storage solutions on the market,” said George Patterson, a member of the Cho Oyu expedition. “I read the specs for the drive and was impressed, but to see them actually work under some very harsh conditions was a real ‘wow’ factor for me.”

Clark said the ruggedized drives are holding up in other challenging situations as well. “Casinos are finding our drives are tough enough to handle being beat up by disappointed gamblers who lose at video poker games,” he said.

The EE25 Series drive can handle life on the battlefield or near the top of the world. But suppose you just want to race through the rough and rugged Baja California desert on a dune buggy, and have video to prove you did it? That’s been done, too.

Exatel Visual Systems, a leading provider of DVR-based surveillance systems, wanted to test not only the ruggedness of the EE25 Series drive, but also that of Exatel’s VA PRO2000 compact DVRs. A wild ride through the rugged Baja seemed the perfect way to push these products to the limit. Exatel asked Seagate engineer Mike Staiano, an integration and qualification expert, for help in preparing for the Baja demo by testing the Exatel product’s system and hard-drive mounting designs.

“Dune buggies really fly over those hills during a race, so the DVR had to handle not only the dry desert heat, but the impact of the jumps,” said Staiano. “For our tests, we ran the audio and video while we banged away at the DVR on vibration tables.”

For the past 10 years, Exatel has focused primarily on the security, intelligence and military markets, but is now expanding its commercial mobile security business to include bus and taxi companies in the U.S. and Europe. Exatel officials figured if the camera could handle being bounced around in a dune buggy during a Baja race, it could handle the notoriously rough rides of any urban environment—potholes and all.

In addition to ruggedness, the drives also needed sufficient capacity to handle longer recording cycles in order to accommodate vehicles that could download video content only once or twice a week.

“We had to develop a recording system that could withstand all the harsh conditions of the road, but still offer high capacities,” said Tom Curran, Exatel CEO.

With 80 GB of storage from the 5,400-RPM EE25 Series drives, Curran said, Seagate was “the obvious choice” for their new DVR.