As several vendors spruik cloud deals a backup storage war has broken out in Australia with two of the biggest players Seagate and Western Digital going head to head with smart new storage products.
The battle intensified yesterday as major rivals Seagate and Western Digital both announced new consumer products that offer easy backups linked to online services.
Seagate introduced its new BackUp Plus line of consumer portable drives at a media function staged – for reasons not immediately apparent – in a Sydney tenpin bowling and Laser Skirmish shoot-em-up alley.
In what B. S. Teh, MD for Asia-Pac and Japan, claimed is an industry first, the drives back up from personal computers with consummate ease – and also save, share and back-up photos and other content on social networking sites like Facebook and Flickr. They can be switched between Macs and Windows PCs without reformatting, Seagate stresses.
The company’s Dashboard software is said to enable one-click local backups as well as a simple way to save and share photos and videos on the social media sites.
 |
The portable 2.5 inch drives come in red, blue, silver and black, with prices starting at A$139 for a 500GB unit. There’s also a super-svelte unit called Slim, just 9.5mm thick, for $159; and a 3.5-inch desk-based drive (in basic black) starting at $179 for one terabyte – and with additional modes offering up to 4TB.
– Meanwhile, rival Western Digital announced its new “Personal Cloud” line of “MyBook” drives, said to offer integration with cloud storage service Dropbox, using the company’s WD 2go software “The new version of WD 2go lets customers move, copy and share content between their mobile device, their Dropbox and their WD personal cloud,” according to an e-mailed press release.
 |
