BYTE THIS: The San Jose Sharks rely on external storage from Seagate to store, share and protect game footage and other digital content.

Hard drives have moved into the starting lineup of virtually every major college and professional sports team, having relegated videotapes and VCRs to the bench over the last decade. And increasingly Seagate storage can be found on many winning teams’ rosters.

The San Jose Sharks of the National Hockey League, for example, use several Seagate external hard drives to give the team a competitive edge. The Sharks, who tied an NHL mark in December for the fastest start ever with 43 points in 25 games, store nearly 10 terabytes (TB) of video footage on Seagate drives.

Each Seagate drive meets a different need for the team. The Sharks use eight 500-gigabyte (GB) Seagate® FreeAgent Go® drives and two 320-GB Seagate BlackArmor drives, for instance, to easily and securely transport video of their games, as well as those of their opponents. With just one compact FreeAgent Go drive, the Sharks have enough capacity to store, share and secure about 375 digitized games. Good luck doing that with videotape or DVDs—you’d need to check an extra suitcase or two at the airport, says Paul Fink, the team’s manager of hockey technology.

“Our coaches can hop on a plane with just a laptop and a portable Seagate drive,” says Fink, “and they can edit and break down games by the time they reach their next city. We often play three games in four nights, so time is of the essence. With the speed and convenience of Seagate hard drives, our coaches can get their work done by the time their plane lands.”

The team also uses several 1-TB Seagate FreeAgent XTreme drives for backup and archiving their digital content. The performance and reliability of Seagate products give the Sharks the confidence that their storage solutions will perform at the highest level, night in and night out.

“We need fast access to as much video as our coaches need, whether it’s showing players what they did well during a game, what they need to work on, or scouting one of our opponents,” says Brett Heimlich, a video assistant with the team. “Seagate’s drives are very fast, they’re easy to set up and they run very quietly.”

“We depend on these drives,” adds Fink, who says the Sharks’ scouts also use Seagate storage to evaluate players in the team’s minor-league system. “With Seagate, I know our storage is going to work and it’ll do the job that we need.”

Security is another top concern for the Sharks, which is why the team opts to store its sensitive data on BlackArmor drives, which offer government-grade data encryption.

“Security is a big issue for us, whether it’s budgeting information or personnel files involving our current players and future prospects,” says Fink. “With the self-encryption features of the BlackArmor drives, we don’t have to worry about any of that data falling into the wrong hands. You just type in a password and you’re ready to go.”

Seagate and the Sharks are teaming for several “BlackArmor Nights” at the HP Pavilion in San Jose this season.

The Sharks’ technical staff isn’t on the ice to score a power-play goal in overtime, of course, but they still play a crucial part in the team’s success, says assistant coach Jay Woodcroft.

“When we came in as a staff, we came in with the attitude that we didn’t want anyone to outwork us,” says Woodcroft, who—along with head coach Todd McLellan—joined the team in June after a successful stint with the 2008 Stanley Cup champion Detroit Red Wings. “We have to digest a lot of information to make the head coach’s job easier. We’re very demanding, and Paul and Brett have come through for us with flying colors.”

Despite a sizzling start to the 2008-09 season, Sharks executive Malcolm Bordelon isn’t worried the team may be peaking too early. With its 5-2 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs on Dec. 2, the Sharks tied the 1943-44 Montreal Canadiens for the best start in NHL history with 43 points in 25 games (with a league-best 21 wins in that span).

“You can usually tell if it’s just a streak or if a team is truly good,” says Bordelon, EVP of business operations for the Sharks. “This team plays in great control, and they can take over a game very quickly. Their shots-on-goal is indicative of that. They’re making a huge number of goals this year, compared to previous years. I think we’re on the right track.”

The Sharks were a trendy pick by many media outlets to win the Stanley Cup last year, but fell in the second round of the playoffs for the third straight season. That could be a big reason why the team isn’t taking its initial success for granted. The same goes for the storage the team uses.

“Not many teams use as much video as we do,” says Woodcroft, “and Seagate drives have been invaluable in enabling us to store and share all that video.”

To learn more about Seagate storage and the Sharks, visit Seagate's Media Center to watch a video.