Seagate has unveiled two new storage products for the home, the Seagate Personal Cloud and Seagate Personal Cloud 2-Bay. Seagate indicates that the two Personal Cloud drives differ from their competition by how easily they can stream content to smartphones, set-top boxes, tablets, PCs or televisions using the Seagate Media application. In addition, when combined with the Seagate Mobile Backup app and Dashboard software, Seagate Personal Cloud also serves as a central backup device for PCs, Mac computers, USB drives, iOS and Android mobile devices.
Seagate has unveiled two new storage products for the home, the Seagate Personal Cloud and Seagate Personal Cloud 2-Bay. Seagate indicates that the two Personal Cloud drives differ from their competition by how easily they can stream content to smartphones, set-top boxes, tablets, PCs or televisions using the Seagate Media application. In addition, when combined with the Seagate Mobile Backup app and Dashboard software, Seagate Personal Cloud also serves as a central backup device for PCs, Mac computers, USB drives, iOS and Android mobile devices.
Once the Seagate Personal Cloud is connected to a wireless router, the Seagate Media app offers users an easy-to-use (yet media-rich) browsing interface, allowing them to playback and browse their content. The Seagate Media apps support the following devices:
- TVs and Blu-ray players: LG Smart TVs (2012 or later) and Samsung Smart TVs and Blu-ray players (2012 models or later with SmartHub)
- Streaming media players: Roku, Google Chromecast, and Apple TV (via Apple AirPlay)
- Smartphones: iPhone, Android
- Tablets: iPad, Android, Kindle, Windows 8/RT
- Seagate Personal Cloud can also stream directly to DLNA-based devices, including the Sony PlayStation 3 or later, and Microsoft Xbox 360 or later.
Seagate Personal Cloud drives can also be set up to complement a public cloud service with two types of applications: backup and synchronization. Personal Cloud drives can also be configured to automatically back up to providers including: Amazon S3, Box, Baidu, DropBox, Google Drive, HiDrive and Yandex.Disk. As an alternative method, a synchronization option is available for Baidu, DropBox and Google Drive for users who simply need a secondary copy of their most current data from their service.
Seagate has designed the Personal Cloud devices with a built-in app manager, allowing users to install additional features after their purchase; some of these apps include WordPress, BitTorrent Sync and ElephantDrive. Seagate has also created a software development kit for the app manager, enabling 3rd party developers to create new and exciting use cases for Personal Cloud drives.
The Personal Cloud 2-bay device is designed for users that need more than one backup of their most content in case one of the drives fail. Right out-of-the-box, the Personal Cloud 2-bay is configured to automatically duplicate all content stored on one drive to a secondary drive, which allows for double protection. Users that are seeking maximum capacity can configure the Personal Cloud 2-bay into a single volume of storage as well.
Availability
The Seagate Personal Cloud (3TB, 4TB, and 5TB capacities) will be shipping to retailers later in January. Seagate Personal Cloud 2-Bay will be available in 4TB, 6TB and 8TB capacities and will be shipped at the same time.
Update: Our review of the Seagate Personal Cloud 2-bay
