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.
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