Continuing its
leadership as the hard disc drive of choice around the world, Seagate
Technology today announced that it has reached the 150 million
mark in unit shipments of its Barracuda 7200-rpm family of hard drives.

The shipment milestone comes as Seagate prepares to launch Barracuda
7200.9, the ninth-generation of the drive. Barracuda 7200.9 combines a massive
half-terabyte (500GB) of capacity with a powerful 3 Gigabit/second Serial ATA
(SATA) interface to deliver a leading combination of storage capacity,
performance and reliability for mainstream PCs, high-performance digital video
workstations, media PCs and PC gaming systems, and low-cost servers.

With Barracuda, Seagate has set the standard for desktop PC hard drive
innovation, reliability and quality. The Barracuda 7200-rpm family combines a
wide range of capacities — from 40GB to 500GB — with performance that rivals
10,000-rpm desktop drives, superb reliability, whisper-quiet acoustics, an
industry-leading five-year warranty, and Serial ATA (SATA) with native command
queuing (NCQ). NCQ increases performance and disc drive life by optimizing the
way the drive processes workloads. (For more information about Native Command
Queuing, see Seagate’s article in the July issue of Computer Technology
Review.)

“The Barracuda has been one of Seagate’s most successful hard drives,”
said IDC analyst Dave Reinsel. “Drives such as the Barracuda that deliver
quality and value across a range of capacities and applications undoubtedly
will continue to be embraced by the marketplace.”

“The highest levels of performance, reliability and overall product
quality are the hallmark of our Barracuda disc drives,” said Brian Dexheimer,
Seagate executive vice president of Global Sales and Marketing. “That’s why
Barracuda remains the world’s most popular drive and continues to anchor an
expanding Seagate product portfolio that includes drives for everything from
notebook PCs, digital video recorders and music players to nearline storage,
desktop add-on and back-up storage, portable storage and automotive
applications.”

Seagate is the worldwide leader in the design, manufacturing and marketing
of hard disc drives, providing products for a wide-range of Enterprise,
Desktop, Mobile Computing, and Consumer Electronics applications. Seagate’s
business model leverages technology leadership and world-class manufacturing
to deliver industry-leading innovation and quality to its global customers,
and to be the low cost producer in all markets in which it participates. The
company is committed to providing 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.

NOTE: Seagate, Seagate Technology and the wave logo are registered
trademarks of Seagate Technology LLC. Barracuda is a trademark or registered
trademark of Seagate Technology LLC. One gigabyte, or GB, equals one billion
bytes when referring to hard drive capacity. Accessible capacity may vary
depending on operating environment and formatting.