Seagate Refuses to Sell High Capacity 2.5-Inch HDDs

The new FreeAgant DockStar is offered by Seagate Technology with portable FreeAgent Go drives at 250GB, 320GB, 500GB and 640GB, but also at 750GB, 880GB and 1TB. But the company never officially launched these last three 2.5-inch HDDs with the highest available capacity on the market (with WD units).

Why? Jon van Bronkhorst, executive director of product marketing of the Seagate consumer solutions group, told us that the reason was these SATA drives are based on the enterprise 2.5-inch devices of the company, with three platters, 5,400rpm, and a 15mm height not compatible with notebook PCs. But he also adds that these new HDDs will not be sold at all by Seagate, even to companies offering portable external units.

Seagate wants to protect its external drive market and doesn’t want to see a competitor designing an external portable unit at more than 640GB. To anybody: "You can buy 640GB, but no more".

To our knowledge, since the beginning of the HDD history, it’s the first time an HDD maker refuses to sell a drive to an OEM or to any other customer. You can only acquire it included in more expansive external versions.

On its side, WD, also in the external drive market, accepts to sell its comparable units, the Scorpio Blue models, at 750GB and 1TB, 5,200rpm, with an height of 12.5mm no more compatible with notebooks that use 9.5mm devices.

But if both companies and tomorrow other ones (Hitachi GST, Samsung, Toshiba?) adopt the same strategy, it means that their competitors in the external market, already obliged to get their HDDs at a greater price that the manufacturers themselves, will be in a rather dramatic situation.