Seagate Debuts iOS-Compatible Storage Option, Personal Cloud and Ultra-Thin Portable Hard Drive

[MentalFloss]

Not bad. I have been looking into buying some "home cloud server" like this for a while now, as I definitely need more than the 1 TB maximum storage offered by iCloud, and Apple's 1TB prices are already ridiculous. For that kind of money, I can just as well buy my own server. Less convenient, but it's fully under my control.

 

[Robert.Walter]

I've been waiting for some of these features to be integrated into OS X and iOS since I bought my first time capsule and iPad back in 2011.

I don't see why the iOS devices (with their Desktop Quality 64-bit processors) are incapable of using Back to My Mac to connect up to a home Mac or a storage volume on a time capsule's hdd or a nas hdd connected to an airport router via usb.

And for those folks who don't need a Mac, I don't understand why it is not possible to back up an iOS device directly to a time capsule.

The hardware is all in place, absent a strategic decision by apple to not support such storage and access with native apple hw and sw, only the software is lacking.

At the same time, Apple seems both at risk of being behind the competition in providing such solutions as well as being frustratingly close to stealing a march on them by implementing such low hanging fruit.

 

[MH01]

I hope they I proved their reliability, of the major manafactures I found seagate to have the highest failure rate.

 

[jlc1978]

Imagine you're in a hotel room in a foreign country.

The first five minutes of the video that you watch through iCloud costs more in phone bills than this device does.

Imagine that your hotel room comes with free WiFi... welcome to 2015.

Imagine you are in a country where hotels still charge for internet access. Welcome to traveling abroad.

 

[Icaras]

When exactly did "thinness" become a selling point for tech enthusiasts?

Since 1984.

 

[EvilEvil]

Seagate/WD, no thank you, HGST drives are so much better.
Sadly there are not many reliable drive manufacturers left, the former brands bought almost everyone out.
Yes, I am aware that HGST is part of them now as well, at least AFAIK.

You mean HGST Deathstars? No thanks. WD is still good. I never have a problem. Seagate on the other hand...

 

[justperry]

Imagine you are in a country where hotels still charge for internet access. Welcome to traveling abroad.

Guess what, most of the time they are the more expensive ones which nickel and dime you, been to lots of cheap backpacker/hostels/hotels which have free internet, in lots of places around the world.

----------

You mean HGST Deathstars? No thanks. WD is still good. I never have a problem. Seagate on the other hand...

WD: Just in the last two months friends/relatives had two of them fail.

I had/have plenty of Hitachi/IBM drives, never had one fail on me, never!

 

[dazzer21]

Can I move apps from my 16GB iPad onto this external drive and run them straight off that, or do they have to be resident on the iPad to run?

 

[0098386]

Imagine that your hotel room comes with free WiFi... welcome to 2015.

Imagine that your hotel room comes with reliable wifi, capable of streaming video... welcome to 2020.

 

[grahamperrin]

… several new LaCie products …

https://www.macrumors.com/2015/01/02/lacie-ces-new-products/ is not found. Instead:
https://www.macrumors.com/2015/01/04/lacie-ces-new-products/

This stores files on a single hard located (presumably) in your home.

How is this cloud storage? …

"Personal Cloud" (not simply cloud). That way of describing things is not unusual. For example,

"… possibilities for a FreeNAS web server or personal “cloud server” with tools like OwnCloud. …"​

Not bad. I have been looking into buying some "home cloud server" like this for a while now, as I definitely need more than the 1 TB maximum storage offered by iCloud, and Apple's 1TB prices are already ridiculous. For that kind of money, I can just as well buy my own server. Less convenient, but it's fully under my control.

There's the inconvenience of initial setup but then it's fine. FreeNAS here on an old Dell that was gifted to me by a friend, with a failing hard disk drive, when he got an iMac to replace it.

I wonder what file system is internal to the two Seagate products …

Since 1984.

Well, I have an Apple carry case for a Macintosh from that period, which can be relatively flat if sat on by the cats, but I can't think of it as embodying a vogue for thinness

The supported methods of increasing storage are to either buy a new phone or use iCloud, which after a while will tell you to buy a new phone.

… and which will steer Mac users of iCloud Drive to Yosemite, then Perfunctory :-(

Can I move apps from my 16GB iPad onto this external drive and run them straight off that …?

Keyword stream in the news article so let's assume that the answer is yes.

Postscript: that was wrong. https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=20559303#post20559303 for the correct answer (thanks to Nickerbocker).​

 

[joneill55]

well I have 26 years of experience of seagate drives failing.

Could not have said it better!(Maybe a little faster)
Good thing it can be backed up to DropBox and/ or the Cloud.

 

[SHirsch999]

When exactly did "thinness" become a selling point for tech enthusiasts?

You do realize this is an Apple-centric site, right?

 

[Jessica Lares]

Well you probably own apple products, so complaining about a premium price seems really hypocritical

Wasn't complaining. Am seriously going to buy two of them. One to replace my aging WD, another for backups.

 

[Morod]

I had/have plenty of Hitachi/IBM drives, never had one fail on me, never!

The original HD in my iMac was Hitachi. Failed after 2 1/2 years. Thanks to Applecare, I got a new Intel HD that's had no problems.
No problems here with Seagate drives either. Guess I'm just charmed.

 

[jlc1978]

Guess what, most of the time they are the more expensive ones which nickel and dime you, been to lots of cheap backpacker/hostels/hotels which have free internet, in lots of places around the world.

Guess what - most travelers don't stay in cheap backpacker/hostels/hotels and so a device that eliminates or greatly reduces the need for internet access is quite useful; in addition it comes in handy when the connection is slow or down.

WD: Just in the last two months friends/relatives had two of them fail.

I had/have plenty of Hitachi/IBM drives, never had one fail on me, never!

WD and Seagate seem to have gone downhill lately; although I have also had Hitachi/IBM/Apple branded drives fail as well. I would not rely on any brand to store critical files without a proper backup.

 

[Jetfire]

Imagine that your hotel room comes with free WiFi... welcome to 2015.

Image that free wifi is slower than dial up in 1995. Welcome to hotel free wifi.

 

[grahamperrin]

Seagate Wireless Plus, LaCie Fuel, the new Seagate Wireless

2012, August:

• Seagate and LaCie Announce Completion of the Acquisition of a Controlling Interest in LaCie | Seagate

2014, February:

• LaCie Fuel Offers 1 TB Wireless Storage with Hotspot Sharing for iOS Devices and Macs – Mac Rumors
• … … up to a 10–hour battery life …
• … RRP: £169.90 … Best Price: £127 … and from that Macworld review, with additional emphasis:

"… LaCie was taken over by Seagate about a year ago, but the two brands are being kept separate as LaCie is the more well-known name at the 'premium' end of the market (i.e. Mac users who don’t mind paying a bit extra for nicely designed gadgets). Inevitably, though, there will be some overlap between the two brands, and the new LaCie Fuel is essentially LaCie's version of the Seagate Wireless Plus drive that we reviewed a few months ago. …"​

LaCie Fuel, from LaCie, is currently £129.99 for 1 TB or £164.99 for 2 TB (including VAT).

2015, January:

Seagate Debuts iOS-Compatible Storage Option … The new 500GB Seagate Wireless portable hard drive is the company's latest HD designed specifically for use with tablets and smartphones like Apple's iPad and iPhone, introducing additional storage at affordable price. …

£90 -ish. Can anyone recall costs of Seagate's predecessor to the new 500 GB option?

£90 x 2 = £180 for two 500 GB wireless portable drives from Seagate, that's considerably more costly than the (premium) LaCie 1 TB product.

I guess that the Seagate is more costly because it's smaller. And because it's thinner?

Postscript

Seagate Wireless Plus 1 TB for £130.05 including VAT from Seagate (£109.99 from one of the resellers) – pretty much the same as the cost of the 'premium' branded LaCie product.

From Seagate Wireless Plus - frequently asked questions (undated, copyright 2015):

What's the difference between the Seagate Wireless Plus for iPad and the Seagate Wireless Plus?

This is the same product. The iPad is a good fit for use with the Seagate Wireless Plus (as are other Apple iOS devices and Android devices), so these words are often found together.

 

[b0nd18t]

Dropbox more than adequately backs up my media, for free. Who needs these?

 

[Stella]

Is it really not possible to make external storage for iOS without using a complementary proprietary app?

Its not in Apple's interest to do so either. People will buy lower capacity devices and use external storage. Unfortunately - nothing wrong with the convenience of external storage.

Dropbox more than adequately backs up my media, for free. Who needs these?

Not everyone has enough internetwork bandwidth? Local storage vs remote storage - that you can't control.

 

[newagemac]

will someone please come up with a portable hard disk with wifi and an iTunes Server. I hate having to hook up my mbp every time i want to watch or hear something of my apple tv.

This already exists. With iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match I don't have to hook up anything to watch my iTunes content and never have to worry about carrying around a hard drive or running out of space.

 

[grahamperrin]

Firmware, source code, internal file systems

… I wonder what file system is internal to the two Seagate products …

… 500GB Seagate Wireless portable hard drive … $129.99 …

I could not easily find information from Seagate (sorry).

Seagate Personal Cloud … securely on a dedicated hard drive … 2-Bay will be available in 4TB, 6TB, and 8TB capacities …

http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/006081en differentiates between RAID 1 and RAID 0, and http://www.seagate.com/www-content/...docs/personal-cloud-2-bay-ds1839-1-1501gb.pdf lists specifications, but neither mentions a file system.

Personal Cloud and Personal Cloud 2-Bay Firmware GPL Source Code – Seagate

Amongst the archives in that code set:

• davfs2
• dosfstools
• e2fsprogs
• hfsprogs
• libnfsidmap
• nfs_utils
• xfsprogs

From Wikipedia:

e2fsprogs (sometimes called the e2fs programs) is a set of utilities for maintaining the ext2, ext3 and ext4 file systems. Since those file systems are often the default for Linux distributions, it is commonly considered to be essential software. …

XFS is a high-performance 64-bit journaling file system created by Silicon Graphics, Inc (SGI) in 1993.[1] It was the default file system in the SGI's IRIX operating system starting with its version 5.3; the file system was ported to the Linux kernel in 2001. As of June 2014, XFS is supported by most Linux distributions, some of which use it as the default file system. …​

A guess:

• one of the two stores the OS
• the other stores user data

– I can't guess which is used for which.

Can either file system match the data integrity that's possible with e.g. FreeNAS? I doubt it.

 

[alent1234]

This already exists. With iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match I don't have to hook up anything to watch my iTunes content and never have to worry about carrying around a hard drive or running out of space.

fine for new releases but last month i officially became sick of the cloud, especially for watching older movies. i have 50/5 internet and itunes and vudu both cut out watching older movies.

my guess is they aren't on a CDN server close to me and have to be streamed from far away. until these jokers host every single movie on a CDN, i'll continue to buy blu rays and download my own copies from itunes or vudu

 

[RobQuads]

"Cloud" must be the most over used term if 2014/2015

How can a single local backup drive be a 'cloud'

 

[Count Blah]

Nope. Not until apple changes something.

Gotta milk those customers for big $$$ storage upgrades. Customer needs be damned.

 

[grahamperrin]

More than just backup

… How can a single local backup drive be a 'cloud'

That alone is not a cloud. At least one of the products in the news article is more than just a local backup drive.

Beneath the headline at Personal Cloud Home Media Storage – Seagate:

… Access … at home or on the road …

Side note: technically, OS X treats this type of storage at home as remote – not local.