Seagate Reinvents Backup For Your Digital Life

New Consumer Storage First to Offer Saving and Sharing of Facebook and Flickr Photo/Video Albums.

Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ: STX) introduced Backup Plus storage devices – its reinvented consumer storage product family that delivers the easiest setup, one-click backup and the ability to save and share your content on Facebook and Flickr.

Seagate^® Backup Plus hard drives are newly designed external storage that work interchangeably with both Windows^® and Apple^® computers and deliver new features to protect, share and save nearly every aspect of one’s digital life. These products come loaded with the new hassle-free Seagate Dashboard software for one-click local backup making it easier than ever to eliminate excuses or apprehensions about backing up one’s most valuable digital content. Seagate Backup Plus products are the world’s first external hard drives to provide backup for content on social networks, such as Facebook and Flickr. Storing a local duplicate copy of photos from social networks is now as easy as backing up files on your computer. Seagate Backup Plus will provide the peace of mind that every aspect of one’s digital life is safe from loss.

Backing up data is an absolute necessity that many people put off until after it’s too late. According to a 2011 study by Parks Associates less than one-quarter of the households in the survey have a weekly backup plan for their systems and only 4% are diligent enough to manually perform a backup on a daily basis.¹

“The idea of providing a backup of photos and videos from Facebook is an interesting one, which I believe may help people come to realize the importance of maintaining multiple copies of any digital asset regardless of where it is stored,” said Brett Sappington, director of research for Parks Associates. “Social media has become a massive repository for personal digital content, and most consumers have not likely considered the possibility of losing access to those shared memories.”

Seagate Backup Plus hard drives featuring the new Seagate Dashboard backup software remove the barriers to performing backup and content preservation by making it as easy as possible. With just a click of an icon, computer files are replicated onto a Backup Plus drive. The Seagate Dashboard included on Backup Plus also provides a single click path to Save (download) and Share (upload) personal photos and videos on Facebook and Flickr.

According to a recent survey commissioned by Seagate and conducted online by Harris Interactive from May 22-24, 2012, more than half (54%) of U.S. adults personally have and/or know someone who has lost files. Over one-quarter (27%) of U.S. adults personally have lost files and found that it was upsetting for them. While almost all (97%) of those surveyed were identified as computer owners; only 11% have a continuous backup plan and only 10% have a daily backup plan. ²

“Backing up needs to be an essential part of everyone’s digital life. Nearly everything that is dear to us is now in a digital format; from tax documents, to emails, to family photos and video, many of these files can not be recreated in the event of an accidental loss or system failure,” said Scott Horn, vice president of Marketing at Seagate. “Seagate is in the business of keeping digital content and files protected in every aspect, whether it is in the cloud, stored on PC or with our external consumer products. Backup Plus is a product that eliminates the barriers to protecting these digital assets. The new Dashboard delivers a simple and complete backup experience with the added benefit of saving photos and video stored on Facebook and other social networks.”

A Versatile Storage Device

In 2010, Seagate adopted the Universal Storage Module (USM^®) standard, which enables consumers to easily add the newest Mac^® and PC connection capabilities to their Seagate storage product even if these technologies are introduced later. To add yet another level of versatility, Seagate has introduced a way to have the company’s external storage products work cross-platform with both Mac^® and Windows^® operating systems without reformatting.

 

^{1The survey, “Consumers and Cloud Media,” fielded between August 15 and August 25, 2011. Parks Associates surveyed 2,000 broadband Internet heads-of-household in the U.S. All respondents were 18 or over and had an equal or greater share in household decisions. “Consumers and Cloud Media” analyzes the market for cloud media services, digital lockers and trends in Internet video and social networking. The survey results were first published in September of 2011.}

^{2This survey was conducted online within the United States by Harris Interactive, on behalf of Seagate from May 22-24, 2012 among 2,205 adults aged 18 and older, among whom 2,162 are computer owners. This online survey is not based on a probability sample and therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.}