Seagate's New Drive Line: Free Agent, with John van Bronkhorst
08:37 | 
John van Bronkhorst, Seagate’s executive director for branded solutions reveals the new features in the Free Agent new generation hard drives. This is a Seagate podcast.
Transcript:
Host: Michael Johnson – PodTech
Guest: John van Bronkhorst – Seagate
Michael Johnson - PodTech
This is Michael Johnson and we are here at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas, here in the Seagate/PodTech BlogHaus. We are here with John van Bronkhorst who is the Executive Director of Seagate Branded Solutions, welcome to the Podcast.
John van Bronkhorst – Seagate
Thanks very much, I’m happy to be here.
Michael Johnson - PodTech
Now, you’ve got some exciting products here. I’ve just, actually, been introduced to a whole new line of Seagate products which are rolling out here at CES. Tell us a little bit about this new family and what’s different about this particular line?
John van Bronkhorst – Seagate
Well, Seagate for years has provided storage and capacity and we are now – we are the world’s leading disk drive manufacturer. For years we’ve had a retail presence that’s putting disk drives in boxes and selling capacity points. Last year, Seagate bought Maxtor Corporation. All of a sudden we had two brands selling pretty much the same thing, gigabytes in a box with backup solutions. Maxtor had a really good brand presence in the marketplace, known as the backup data security and protection brand.
So, we are leaving it that way, so we’re using this opportunity today here at CES to launch a new brand strategy for Seagate, which is all about you. It’s about you and your creativity and the freedom to access your data and use your data anytime anywhere. So, we’ve brought up this entire new product line, it’s called Seagate Free Agent; it ranges from a 1 inch 12 gigabyte product up to a 2.5 inch product that goes from 80-160 gigabytes, all the way up to the Free Agent pro-product, which is a 3.5 inch desktop product, it goes all the way to 750 gigabytes. We have different software feature sets between the portable products and the desktop products; we’ve got a fantastic new look and feel. They look different, they feel different, they act different. They appeal to a different audience than the old silver boxes that were only about capacity and backup.
So, we have taken the two brands now that we have both of them within our control. Maxtor will be about data back-up and data security and Seagate will be all about creativity and freedom. How to use your data, how to take your data with you, how to have access to your data, your content? We live in a media rich world.
So, it’s a fascinating time for us. The other thing that’s really important about this product announcement we have today, is that we’ve put a five year warranty on all of these products. It’s no longer that you get a one year warranty on an external storage device. They’re not just storage devices, they are really data movers, they are content places, places you can feel comfortable about what you do with your rich media. So, given that the rich media is very valuable to people, it’s usually pictures, videos and music, most of that non-recreatable. So, it’s valuable to people. Five year warranty gives them more confidence in their ability to have that safe.
Michael Johnson – PodTech
Well, it’s a real statement because I know that with drives that I have bought in the past maybe it has a one year guarantee. Now, this is — they usually last beyond that, but still I guess the idea that this stuff that you’re talking about, I mean, it’s – whether it’s working as a professional in audio and video production or whether you are just backing-up and storing these memories now more and more. One year doesn’t seem like it’s valuing my life very much.
John van Bronkhorst – Seagate
Well, you are absolutely right about that. It’s fascinating as we look at this, you think about the days when we grew up and mom would take all the pictures and put them in a shoe box. That was the data aggregator. Well, today, the pictures don’t go in a shoe box because they are digital. So, you have to have comfort, confidence and the feeling of security about where you are putting them. So, we give you the ability to in fact, in our Free Agent pro-products we have the ability, the functionality in that product to auto upload a synchronized folder to your Shutterfly account. So, you could actually print or create photo products with your pictures, but now your pictures are replicated not only on your hard drive and on your external storage data movie or Free Agent pro-product, but also on your Shutterfly account. You’ve got it in three places; you’re safer than you would be if you just had it on your hard drive.
Michael Johnson - PodTech
Now that was one incidence of, one instance about where I was leading with my next question is, you’d mentioned before these drives are going to act different. Let’s catch up with that concept a little bit because I don’t think that people are used to thinking about their drives acting in a certain way besides may be quaming (ph).
John van Bronkhorst – Seagate
You are absolutely right. We’ve lived in a world where the drives historically have just been expansion vehicles. You go buy an external disk drive and plug it into your computer because you ran out of space on your hard drive. That’s not really a very active product; it’s not really doing anything for you. In fact, you’re doing something with it. So, we’ve put software and feature sets on these new products that do things for you. So, on the portable products there’s a portable environment, you actually can take your settings, your personal files, your personality with you.
So, your passwords are there, your Internet favorites, your portable applications, your email files. So, you can take your portable drive when you go to your mom’s house and you want to show her the pictures you took. You don’t have to take or carry your laptop computer. You can take your portable drive to your friend’s house and share your music files. You can take your portable drive on your next business trip and still have access to your email.
So, portability is a key point here, it’s no longer just a storage receptacle, it’s giving new functionality and future sets. When you move up to the Pro-products and the desktop products, which sit in your home on your desk and looks so elegant next to your flat panel display and your nice sleek keyboard. We give you the ability to have an online storage account, so you can synchronize your data into the cloud. In fact, when you buy a Free Agent pro-product, we’ll give you 500 megabytes of space online for six months for free, included with the purchase of the product. You are always free to buy more expansion space, you are free to extend it beyond the six months. We are hoping to prove to people that there is a value in this online capability, but that online capability gives you anytime anywhere access.
So, again, if you buy the pro-product, you put your pictures on it and then you synchronize them into your Internet disk in the cloud. Then you go to your mom’s house and you’ll login into your Internet disk in the cloud and you’ll share your pictures. She can see your stuff, without you actually having to carry it. So, we are giving you a really different way of managing and using all the stuff that you’ve created, it’s not just about storage expansion, it’s about usability.
Michael Johnson - PodTech
But you got a major hurdle to overcome that with this idea — sure people are taking more digital pictures now, they are really — they are getting clearly, they just –actually in some ways don’t have a choice right now about where they are going, as far as generating digital content, but then you got a trust factor. You’ve got to really be able to put trust in that box and folks are used to I think traditionally since, this is a whole another era, it’s a whole new hard drive. They have to get to know this; this object and it relate to it in a different way. How is Seagate going to cross that hurdle?
John van Bronkhorst – Seagate
Well, it’s all very true. Today people are taking those pictures and putting them on their PCs, which could be generic PCs, they don’t know what’s inside and they’re trusting that. The scary thing is they don’t even know they are trusting it and they won’t know they have a problem until they loose something.
So, there is a lot of work that has to be done to message this and to educate people as to the value of the content on their computers. Those who are knowledgeable for the first time this last year finally valued the content on their computers as priceless because the stuff can’t be recreated. I can’t go back five years and take another picture of grandma with my child when she was an infant. I can’t do that and if I loose that, I’ve lost something that has tremendous sentimental value.
So, we’ll do a lot of work in educating people as to the importance of their personal content that they’ve created and that we want to make sure they never loose. So, with the Seagate brand, you’ve number one, you’ve got the largest disk drive manufacturer in the world. We have a very long history of data integrity and data protection and security and now we are bringing the five year warranty to that as well. In order to give people the comfort and confidence that we know what’s your stuff and we know it’s important to you and we will do everything to protect that, that we possibly can.
Michael Johnson - PodTech
John van Bronkhorst is the Executive Director of Seagate Branded Solutions. We are here at CES in Las Vegas, they are rolling out some new brands; the Free Agent line. You can take a look at them at Seagate.com and there’s a special area for CES things as well.
John van Bronkhorst – Seagate
That’s correct.
Michael Johnson – PodTech
Also Maxtor Solutions has something as well.
John van Bronkhorst – Seagate
Maxtor Solutions is to look at all of that, all the products for data security and protection. We’ve got a broad range of products across both brands now to provide you with any need you may have.
Michael Johnson - PodTech
John thanks for being on the Podcast.
John van Bronkhorst – Seagate
Thanks very much.
Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy
Tags: John van Bronkhorst, Seagate, Free Agent
25 Responses to “Seagate’s New Drive Line: Free Agent, with John van Bronkhorst”
Leave a Comment
Our Client Shows
Upcoming Events
Additional Sites
Contact Info:
Press:
pr@podtech.net
Sales:
sales@podtech.net
Feedback:
feedback@podtech.net
Privacy Policy
PodTech Network is committed to protecting your online privacy while providing you with the most useful and enjoyable Web experience possible.
Terms of Use
Copyright ©2008 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Modified: Fri, 05 Sep 2008 01:29:38 -0700
May 16th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
I purchased aseagate Freeagent USB2.0 320GB ST303204FDA1E1-RK. The literature says plug it in, nothing else. Is it working. Is it backing up. I have nothing that tells me its working or backing up. What are the steps, procedures for checking the drive and selected files. Can I manually backup? Come-on, you have to have somekind of instructions with this box. Is there a “wizzard” located somewhere that I can access. thanks
etbaker0@sbcglobal.net
June 1st, 2007 at 5:48 pm
ETBaker is right on with his query. How about letting me in on the secret.
June 6th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
I just bought the Seagate 320 Free Agent also. Had to upgrade my USB ports to 2.0. Everything hooked up fine.
I was wondering why no instructions on how to use the product? Just the cutesy PLUG IT IN mini brochure.
I did find that if I went into windows explorer and right clicked on a file, I now have the option to send it to drive H.
I never noticed the option “install all ” before, so I am assuming it is new to my right click menu because of the new external hard drive?
I called Staples and talked to a tech, but he didn’t seem to know. Said I probably shouldn’t click on it til I found out.
When I purchased the drive, I was told to just right click on whatever files I want and send them to the new drive.
But, I read on the net, that there are some files you shouldn’t send.
I am tired of searching the net to find out how to use this and getting 2 different answers.
Also, how do you turn it on and off?
I see the icon for removing, but I don’t’ want to remove it do I?
do I keep it plugged in all the time?
It comes on when I start my computer and shuts down when I shut down the computer. Is this the way it is supposed to work?
I read someone said they could overheat if left on when you aren’t using it. Please help…….
June 11th, 2007 at 9:42 am
I often have content that I need to make available to customers. I already have the ability to upload it to my web server and pay as I would with you for the space reqired to transmit the extra band width.
I was hoping that your product would allow me to give my client access to a network drive that they could access for free just the way Log Me on” software works.
Looks like your just selling Megabites.
Please let me know if I wrong , I’d really like to buy your product.
July 12th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
The 320GB drive is the Desktop version of the drive that does not come with any software. You can do backups with the the Windows XP backup utility or with the MaxBlast 5 software that does image backups of the computer to the external drive.
The drive does not have an on/off switch, it senses the USB port port to turn on and off also it has a sleep mode that is activated after and hour of non usage.
Windows Backup How to:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/bott_03july14.mspx
MaxBlast 5
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=MaxBlast_5&vgnextoid=7add8b9c4a8ff010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD
July 21st, 2007 at 10:11 pm
The Free Agent 500 GB is a total guess! The research consists of stumbling upon this site only to discover since its purchase at Fry’s Electronics that no one, including the comments left at WD website, that there is no support for this product. I’ve wasted hours and days trying to figure out the answers to the writers 1-4 and will check out the site that David recommended. Oh, one other item, my new Dell laptop (cost over $2000) doesn’t use floppy discs so an ASR Recovery Disc cannot be made; hence, this is the second effort to back-up data with negative results. The “online support line” responds automatically but only to acknowledge the inquiry without any follow-up answers to the above questions.
July 30th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
I bought a free agent hard drive to have it fail after three days. Seagate won’t even pay for the shipping to replace it.
August 30th, 2007 at 9:36 am
I purchased aseagate Freeagent USB2.0 500GB
The salesman told that I can store every thing into the freeagent and even I can experience the same desktop anywhere. But when I plugged in as per the instructions nothing happened, there is no cd , mannual which can guide me to do that.
My idea of buying freeagent was so that i can use this anywhere.
September 5th, 2007 at 11:23 am
I’ve had this Seagate Free Agent 500 GB exterman hard drive for a week now. It is recognized by Windows XP but I have no idea how to back up files. The salesman at Office Max said ‘just plug it in’. I need more reassurance that my files are actually backed up but I think I’ve been sold added memory and nothing else.
Customer Support at Seagate disconnects each time I ask the question. Am I being scammed?
September 12th, 2007 at 11:19 am
My Seagate FreeAgent 500 GB failed after two weeks of use!
At first I was seeing “write delay messages” but eventually the unit simply stopped responding.
The reason why this drive fails is that it has a 7200 RPM drive inside a plastic case, trapped in a metal cage, without adequate ventilation. After a few tens of Gigabytes of continuous data transfer, the hard drive inside the Freeagent will likely exceed the manufacturers maximum recommended temperature.
It is a poorly designed chassis. I don’t know what Seagate was thinking!
A better alternative is to purchase a Seagate 500GB SATA drive (because despite this flub, Seagate still makes the best hard drives and offers the best warrantees) and an external USB chassis with good ventilation (such as the Antec MX-1).
September 12th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
Hi, I’m on the road and I think I left the powersource at home!
Can anyone read off the part # and power output and tip dimensions and post them here?
Even better, does anyone have a powersource for the 500 gig Freeagent external they went to sell?
Thanks, Jim
September 13th, 2007 at 11:21 am
The part number you’re looking for is:
WA-24C12U
specs:
100-240V
50-60hz
0.05A
50Va-80Va
12V DC 2A
good luck
September 13th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
Thanks for the quick reply. I believe the power outpt is 0.5 amps. Best Buy has the 320 gig free agent for $100 and I had a $15 gift cert so QED. I’m sure I can put the extra gigs to use. Hey, I just bought 0.82 terabytes of storages (0.32+0.5) in two weeks!
I just realized something during the purchase: there are two versions of Freeagent, one is the Pro version which presumably comes with the backup software. The 320 gig Pro and ‘plain’ versions are the same price. I also noticed a Pro version of the 500 gig model. I bought the plain version and the only file in the drive was the user manual.. The Pro version has an extra logo on the casing which may be the on/off switch. As someone mentioned, the plain version has no switch.
One reason I bought was the five year warranty. I’ve heard external drives are susceptible to heat. They must take a beating in checked luggage too!
Jim
September 15th, 2007 at 7:03 am
My question is th same as Claire’s: I exchanged this from another brand that only had 150GB. THAT brand automatically walked you through the backup process when you connected it to laptop via USB. This seagate leaves me entirely on my own…what do I do to backup my HD??? Halp!??!
September 27th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
This is a question. Can this backup drive be used with a mac?
September 29th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
I have Free Agent 500GB that stopped working. I have tons of data on it. I have two questions please for anyone who can answer. Will Seagate fix it? can I get my data back?
Thanks.
Haas-
October 3rd, 2007 at 9:50 am
You can recover you files by using a
program by ontrack. You can actually just reformat the drive and then thier software will read all of the info and transfer it to another drive…
October 7th, 2007 at 9:27 am
please could you give me contact details as I my freeagent desktop is doing nothing!!
October 13th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
To John Van Bronkhorst c/o Michael Johnson:
Dear John Van Bronkhorst: GREETINGS. My name is Peter Ross and
I’ve been trying to reach you since late September. I want you to
know I think Free Agent is a great concept and represents a text
book opportunity for a product marketing solution, and I’d love to
work on making it a success. I’d consider it an honor and a great
oppportunity. Please consider me a candidate. I too observed the
introduction of the product at Frys Electronics and I too was
fascinated at the number of issues plaguing its positioning.
I’d like to share my observations with you. Please respond.
Sincerely yours, Peter Ross, San Jose, CA.
(408) 295-6687, RossPeter@msn.com THANK YOU.
(Sorry for the redundant submissions)
October 16th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
I use my Free agent 250 for the storage of music and movies, however when I attmetp to play back any files they skip sputter and eventually freeze up. This works regardless of teh program I use to open the file (WM 10, Winamp, or VLC). My System is an HP dv6449us and is
October 16th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
I have a Seagate Free Agent 250 gig external HD. Bought it to store my multimedia files and had no problems with the initial transfer of data. However when I attempt to read and play those files from the Seagate drive they skip, stall and eventually fail. Now I am having a hard time transferring data either to or from my PC. I have an HP dv6449us with WM 10, and the latest VLC players, problems occur with both programs. Any ideas?
November 15th, 2007 at 7:17 am
I believe you can download the discwizard software from the Seagate website under Free Agent products. This is a back-up program so that you can back-up your hard drive.
December 14th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
I have a couple of Free Agent drives that both look and work great. I\’m really hoping for some larger capacity portables that are USB powered for my MacBook.
Any chance of seeing these at CES 2008?
It just boggles the mind how the drives keep getting bigger and bigger (and faster)!
December 14th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
Free Agents rock with Time Machine! Backing up was an easy habit to get into, but archiving was a difficult concept for most. Now for the price of an inexpensive drive, I don\’t have to worry so much about losing versions.
Why can\’t other make stylish products?
December 19th, 2007 at 2:29 am
FreeAgent 750 Pro: USB fine, eSata not working, drive switching on and off /computer freezzes despite fully updated drivers/firmware… gets very hot and when I touch it (eSata only) I can feel a current going into my finger from the metal case= short circuit/not grounded. This drive can cost you your life - avoid at all cost. I’ll try to get my money back.