New Seagate Storage Management Module Designed To Accelerate Integration of Hard Drives Into Consumer Electronic Devices

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. - Seagate Technology (NYSE:STX), the world’s number one hard drive maker, today announced the Seagate Storage Management Module (SMM), a software solution containing drivers, utilities and tools to provide hard drive support for a wide variety of chipsets. Seagate SMM will clear technical obstacles for integrating hard drives into popular consumer electronic devices such as mobile phones, personal media players, IPTV set-top boxes, automotive devices and others. The software is designed to optimize hard drive-powered devices for efficient power consumption, better media recording and playback performance, and instant-on response. Seagate is currently collaborating with leading chipset manufacturers including STMicroelectronics, Marvell, and others.

The amount of content stored on consumer electronic devices is increasing exponentially, yet native support for hard drives does not necessarily exist on the chipsets that power these devices. SMM is a building block in opening new applications that move, store, manage, share, and protect digital content that can be enjoyed wherever, whenever, and however consumers want. The software provides express hard drive integration for applications that would bring the benefits of mass storage to consumers, improving time-to-market, saving money and allowing consumer electronic manufacturers to apply resources to what they do best – creating the latest and greatest devices for which consumers clamor.

“As the leader in the hard drive market, Seagate has dedicated itself to enabling the On-Demand World, where consumers can have their content when, where, and how they want it,” said David Mosley, Seagate vice president of Product Development. “The Storage Management Module software will help manufacturers everywhere create hard drive-based products that offer longer battery life, instantaneous power-on, and better recording and playback performance.”

Seagate Storage Management Module Express Integration Kit
The SMM Express Integration Kit comprises a full suite of tools addressing specific areas of HDD integration and optimization —

• SeaFAT file system – a simple file system solution for RTOS and proprietary operating systems;
• Power Manager – reduces the amount of time the drive spends in “active” mode, delivering more battery life in hard drive powered devices, upwards of 85% power savings in some operational states such as idle,1 and
• Integrated Flash Manager – works with the solid-state memory in consumer electronic devices to deliver consumer benefits such as instant-on and faster playback and recording response.

SMM is designed to scale across a wide variety of operating systems. Today, system developers can use the kit to integrate HDDs into chipsets running Windows CE, Linux, iTRON, and AMSS/REX, with more to come. The initial version of SMM Express Integration Kit will utilize a CE-ATA driver set for mobile electronics and will be interoperable with SD and MMC controllers that currently exist in most mobile electronics devices.

SMM will work with current Seagate technologies that improve performance and robustness of hard drives in mobile devices such as:

• Run-On Technology – delivers consistent media performance even when a mobile device is in vibrating or high-motion conditions, and
• Free Fall Protection – Seagate mobile consumer electronic hard drives are compatible with free fall sensors on portable and handheld devices, meaning that when a system detects that a device is in a free fall, the hard drive will respond to commands from the host sensor and take steps to protect itself, such as powering down the motor and parking the read-write heads away from the platter’s surface.

Seagate Design Service Centers can help with the transition to this highly efficient new standard and will assist with the implementation of the SMM Express Integration Kit. SMM leverages Seagate’s quarter-century of experience helping the world’s biggest technology and consumer brands integrate HDDs into new product categories. 

SMM will first be featured on consumer electronics devices beginning in the first quarter of calendar year 2007.

About Seagate

Seagate is the worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and marketing of hard disc drives, providing products for a wide-range of applications, including Enterprise, Desktop, Mobile Computing, Consumer Electronics and Branded Solutions. Seagate’s business model leverages technology leadership and world-class manufacturing to deliver industry-leading innovation and quality to its global customers, and to be the low cost producer in all markets in which it participates. The company is committed to providing award-winning products, customer support and reliability to meet the world’s growing demand for information storage. Seagate can be found around the globe at www.seagate.com.

Seagate, Seagate Technology and the Wave logo are registered trademarks of Seagate Technology LLC. RunOn Technology is either a trademark or registered trademark of Seagate Technology LLC. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. One gigabyte, or GB, equals one billion bytes when referring to hard drive capacity. One terabyte, or TB, equals 1,000 gigabytes when referring to hard drive capacity. Accessible capacity may vary depending on operating environment and formatting. Quantitative usage examples for various applications are for illustrative purposes. Actual quantities will vary based on various factors, including file size, file format, features and application software.

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For More Information Contact: Colleen Rodriguez