Seagate Captures ’Surfing History’ by Providing Digital Storage for Monster Waves

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif.-As the leader in hard drives and storage solutions, Seagate Technology, (NYSE: STX) continues to play a key role in how people create, capture and consume all kinds of digital media—and now Seagate is out in the lineup when monster surf is making history.

Acclaimed big-wave surfing photographer Robert Brown is an example of one professional who depends on Seagate® hard drives for storing, backing up and sharing his photos—including once-in-a-lifetime shots of what could go down as the biggest day in surfing history.

In early January, Brown was preparing to record an assault on some monster waves forming off the California coast at Cortes Bank, a chain of underwater mountains in the open ocean about 100 miles (170 kilometers) west of San Diego, CA. On January 4, a powerful storm battered California—creating an ideal opportunity for big-wave surfing.

That morning, Brown and four renowned big-wave surfers, including Greg Long, who won the annual Mavericks contest the following week in Northern California, headed out from Dana Point to the open water of Cortes Bank. Fortunately, Mother Nature brought all the elements together to give Brown the rare opportunity to document Grant “Twiggy” Baker, Brad Gerlach, Long and Mike Parsons riding waves as huge as 80 feet—the equivalent of a nine-story building—believed to be the largest anyone has ever attempted.

Brown keeps those once-in-a-lifetime shots, and thousands of other digital images from his portfolio, secure on a new 1TB Maxtor® OneTouch® 4 Plus external storage solution.

“That day at Cortes Bank could go down as the biggest day in surfing history,” said Brown, 49, whose work has appeared in Sports Illustrated, National Geographic and many other publications. “They all rode the biggest waves of their lives. Those photos are timeless. If I lose any pictures from any job, I’m done. Reliability and performance are critical to my work; Seagate has never let me down.”

Brown enjoys the beefy capacity of the Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus solution, which has room for up to 320,000 digital pictures (or 1,000 hours of digital video and 16,660 hours of digital music). He also likes the drive’s easy-to-use features (which include automated backup and encryption software for added security) and its sleek design.

“All I had to do was connect the drive’s FireWire cable to my iMac,” Brown said of the set-up process. “Within minutes, I was loading pictures onto my computer. I never even read the directions that came with the drive. I also like its beautiful design. This drive just flows on my desk and looks great sitting next to my iMac.”

Brown also uses a compact 160GB Seagate® FreeAgent™ Go portable hard drive to securely transport his files while on assignment for commercial clients like Yamaha boats, Kawasaki jet skis, or Quicksilver surf wear. Brown will bring along his laptop for editing photos on the fly; he backs up and shares his work with clients using the FreeAgent Go solution.

“The data-transfer speeds, as with the Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus drive, are incredible,” said Brown, who shoots with a 21-megapixel digital camera. “I can load a full day’s worth of work on the FreeAgent Go drive, hand it off to my client or editor, and show them the results—without any technical delays.”

While professional photographers like Robert Brown depend on Seagate and Maxtor storage solutions to help them do their job, any consumer can take advantage of the benefits of using these external drives as well, said BenHur Castro, senior director for Seagate’s Consumer Solutions Division.

“More and more people are pushing the technology envelope like Robert,” said Castro, “but you don’t have to be a professional to need this level of storage capacity. Seagate’s research has shown that more storage is now being consumed in the home than in the enterprise space. We are addressing that need with easy-to-use and dependable consumer solutions.”