Seagate Technology (NASDAQ:STX) today took the wraps off its new Seagate® NAS HDD— a cutting-edge drive custom-built for always-on, one- to five-bay network attached storage (NAS) systems. Engineered with performance and reliability in mind, the new drives are available in multiple capacity points including a 4TB option— the industry’s highest capacity NAS hard disk drive (HDD) solution available— and strong industry support from nine NAS system partners.

Seagate NAS HDD

“Today about 50 percent of NAS arrays are sold diskless meaning that customers are challenged with identifying and installing the right storage for their system. By developing a drive like NAS HDD, we’ve taken the guesswork out of it and made it easy for customers to identify the right drive for their system,” said Scott Horn, Seagate vice president of marketing. “By collaborating closely with a variety of partners who specialize in NAS systems, we’re making what was a confusing effort into a plug-and-play one.”

Featuring up to 4TB of storage the drive now enables NAS systems, such as those utilized in homes and small to midsize businesses (SMB), to provide up to 20TB of data in a five-bay NAS array. And with over 30 percent capacity improvement over competitive offerings, the NAS HDD 4TB drive delivers the highest capacity available on the market.

Cost effective drives built specifically for NAS solutions, the 4TB option has the capacity to store over 819,000 photos, 1 million songs or nearly 500 hours of high-definition (HD) video content—more than enough space for the average household.  It is also ideal for small businesses with large enough capacities to support CAD files, medical images and databases.

Seagate NAS HDD

“QNAP is thrilled to be teaming up with Seagate to offer our customers a high-performance storage solution optimized for NAS systems,” said Meiji Chang, general manager of QNAP. “The Seagate NAS HDD allows us to deliver the highest capacity storage offering on the market while providing our customers with a huge boost in performance and a reliable business level NAS solution for 24x7 operations.”

“Households and SMBs continue to generate a significant amount of data, and need fast and reliable storage solutions,” said John Rydning, IDC's research vice president for hard disk drives. “Rather than taking hours or days to transfer a large amount of digital content over the internet to a cloud storage service provider, Seagate’s new NAS HDD provides a high-capacity solution for fast data transfers and backups on-premise over local networks.”

Built to provide up to 10 percent performance advantage, over the competition for 24x7 NAS applications, the NAS HDD is engineered for performance in always on applications and can support multiple HD video streams and user profiles. The drive boasts near silent acoustics operating below the range of audible sound for the human ear with as low as 1.9 bels, providing optimized acoustics for the home or SMB environment. It also features Seagate’s own NASWorks™ technology which improves drive reliability by supporting features that limit drive vibrations and support extended error recovery controls for better data integrity.

Seagate NAS HDD

Seagate NAS HDDs are built and tested to provide industry-leading performance for small NAS systems. Key features of the NAS HDD include:

• Industry’s Highest Capacity NAS Drive— up to 4TB available, the NAS HDD offers a 30 percent capacity advantage over the competition.
• Best Performance for 1- to -5-bay NAS Systems— built and tested to provide industry-leading performance, NAS HDDs offer the industry’s highest throughput to deliver the performance demanded by NAS solutions.
• NASWorks— supports error correction via customized error recovery controls, power management and vibration tolerance for optimal performance and reliability in a 1- to 5-bay solution.
• Improved Vibration Tolerance— dual-plane balance supports the unique weighted motor design minimizing vibration that can be amplified in multi-drive systems improving the drive’s performance and system reliability.
• Advanced Power Management— supports multiple user-selectable power profiles that can optimize power usage for different workloads to minimize power consumption while maintaining high-availability performance.
• Quiet Drive Operation— enhances the end customer experience with near-silent acoustics for low-noise environments like living rooms or office spaces.

Designed with compatibility in mind, Seagate NAS hard disk drives have been rigorously tested by some of today’s top NAS providers and flawlessly integrated into their NAS solutions. For more information on the Seagate NAS HDD and qualified OEM partners please visit www.seagate.com/www/nashdd. 

Strong NAS Partner Support
“Seagate's new NAS hard drives have been fully verified as being compatible with all ASUSTOR NAS products. Our users demand reliable performance for 24x7 applications and we are glad to be able to offer them more choices when selecting specialized hard disks for their NAS,” said Shawn Shu, president of ASUSTOR. “We are excited for the launch of the Seagate NAS hard drives and believe that a combination of these drives with ASUSTOR’s full range of NAS products will create an optimal user experience.”

“D-Link prides itself on developing innovative and intuitive solutions. By adding Seagate’s new NAS HDD to our compatible product list, we continue to make it easy for our customers to choose the right storage and get the best experience and reliability from their D-Link NAS,” said Jocelyn Chung, D-Link vice president of marketing, D-Link global headquarters.

“LenovoEMC is focused on delivering innovative and cost-effective storage solutions that our customers value,” said Eric Arcese, president and general manager, LenovoEMC Ltd. “Seagate’s new NAS HDD has been built and tested to provide a performance advantage for always-on NAS applications while at the same time being offered at an affordable price. As a qualified drive for use with Lenovo network storage products, the NAS HDD gives our customers the opportunity to further maximize the return on their technology investments— that’s what we call a ‘win-win’ all around.”

“Seagate has been a trusted partner for many years, and we are excited to integrate these new drives into our DiskStations and RackStations,” said Vic Hsu, CEO of Synology Inc. “By supporting Seagate’s new NAS HDD, Synology will provide users with more freedom in the choice of hard drives and continue to deliver robust and reliable NAS solutions that our customers can count on.”

“The majority of our NAS systems are sold diskless so it just makes sense to partner with an industry leader like Seagate and bring a product to market that is purpose built for NAS arrays,” said Florence Shih, general manager of Thecus Technology. “And with a name like NAS HDD, it makes it easy for customers to ask for the product by name and know that they are getting the right drive for our solutions.”