Features - Storage Innovations:

SEAGATE AND BEST BUY FIRST TO OFFER SERIAL ATA HD IN RETAIL

Seagate, one of the world's leading hard drive makers, and Best Buy, one of the nation's leading entertainment technology retailers, have become the first to offer Serial ATA hard drives to retail consumers. Seagate hard drive kits featuring the new Serial ATA storage interface are now on Best Buy shelves. Seagate's native Serial ATA architecture moves data up to 50 percent faster than the previous standard with intelligent data handling and point-to-point connections. Its cabling and connector design makes upgrades and maintenance easy, and it improves data integrity and PC system reliability.

Seagate's unique native Serial ATA design improves hard drive performance because it handles data more intelligently than parallel ATA hard drives, and offers external transfer rates up to 150 Mbytes per second in its first generation -- 50 percent faster than the Ultra ATA/100 bus most commonly used today in desktop PCs. It uses a point-to-point connection that eliminates device bus sharing, making multi-drive systems like home servers work faster, because the full bandwidth of each bus is dedicated to a single hard drive.

Serial ATA can make installing a hard drive and upgrading your system's capacity a breeze. It uses simple socket-style connectors instead of the old 40-pin connectors, so it's as easy to plug in as a phone. Its thinner, longer cables are easier to route, and hot-plug connectivity can mean greater productivity when reconfiguring a PC system. And Serial ATA has eliminated the need to set tiny master/slave jumpers on the drive. Equally important, Serial ATA provides better reliability and improved data integrity for PCs. 32-bit Cyclic Redundancy Checking protects data, command and status information. More robust cabling with reduced data crosstalk improves overall system reliability, and smaller cables allow better airflow within the PC.

"Best Buy is pleased to push the edge of technology by offering the Seagate Serial ATA hard drive," said Scott Wallace, computer peripherals buyer at Best Buy. "The performance and simplicity of this drive will enable the consumer to easily transfer music, movies and data at high speeds providing an enhanced digital life experience."

"We're bringing our consumers hard drives with great performance using the most advanced technology standards, and products that are more reliable, uncomplicated and low-maintenance," said Brian Dexheimer, Seagate executive vice president of Worldwide Sales, Marketing and Customer Service. "As the first to offer the faster, simpler Serial ATA interface, Seagate and Best Buy are helping consumers advance to next-generation systems now, and simplify their systems at the same time."

Seagate's retail hard drives feature an unsurpassed level of consumer-friendly capabilities -- they are better protected, and easier to install and maintain than any other retail hard drive. With Seagate's unique native Serial ATA technology, fast 7,200-rpm performance and SoftSonic fluid dynamic bearing motors, consumers also get the best combination of innovation, performance, reliability and the quietest operation of any PC hard drive.

Seagate's is the only retail hard drive that offers consumers all these features:

• Serial ATA interface, the new standard for PC performance
• Serial ATA data cable and power cable
• DiscWizard software offers easy, step-by-step installation, tailored to a user's personal PC setup
• SoftSonic motor enables fast 7200-rpm performance and the world's quietest PC hard drive
• SeaTools software helps users find the real source of PC or drive issues and thus avoid the misdiagnosis and unnecessary return of hard drives
• Installation instructions are printed right on the drive, a video installation tutorial is on CD, plus a quick and easy installation guide gets users up and running fast
• SeaShell package protects against over 1,000 Gs shock during handling, preventing damaged drives

Serial ATA is the new standard interface for PC storage and will eventually replace parallel ATA in all PCs. Unlike other Serial ATA hard drives in development, Seagate's native Serial ATA technology contains no parallel-to-serial translator bridges that may reduce performance.

Seagate is a world leader in the design, manufacturing and marketing of hard disc drives for Enterprise, PC and Consumer Electronics applications. The Company is committed to delivering award-winning products, customer support and reliability, to meet the world's growing demand for information storage.

Seagate can be found around the globe and at www.seagate.com.

Contact: John Paulsen, 831-439-2499, or john.paulsen@seagate.com.