Seagate Helps Leading Chinese Photographers Capture Rugged Beauty Of South Africa's Highveld

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BEIJING - December 24, 2008 - South Africa is a country of great contrasts, from the majestic mountains of the Cape to the rugged Africa savanna, or bushveld, of the interior. Some of the greatest biodiversity on the planet lies within its national parks set against a backdrop of highlands, rolling hills, rocky cliffs, outcrops and other dramatic scenery. To visually record this most vivid of natural wonderlands, South African Tourism invited a group of renowned Chinese photographers to experience first-hand and photograph the unique and dramatic scenery.

To enable the photographers to let their creativity run wild and free, Seagate (NASDAQ:STX) provided the entire group with its new FreeAgent™ Go portable hard drives so they could store and share their digital content. The FreeAgent Go product is Seagate’s flagship offering in its extensive new line of FreeAgent storage solutions. At a height of only 12.5mm, it is the slimmest external drive available on the market today. The FreeAgent Go drive easily fits in a pocket while still including all the advanced shock and vibration protection people have come to expect from reliable Seagate products.

Among the renowned photographers joining the group were Huang Qingjun, a freelance photographer who has received a slew of prestigious awards; Ms Zhang Hua, editorial director of photofans.cn; Wang Xiaojing, a famous television cameraman; and Zhu Enguang, a renowned landscape photographer.

The tour started in Johannesburg, the largest city of South Africa, where the photographers were divided into several groups with the aim of documenting the South African experience from different points of view.

Huang Qingjun was struck by the tremendous natural beauty of the scenery and tried his best to capture it on camera. “There is a difference between what the human eye can see and the camera can capture,” he said.

“The human eye can appreciate multi-dimensional space whereas cameras have an in-built limitation. However, I set out to try my best to capture the brilliance of the scenery. High definition and high quality images are an absolute necessity. I use non-compressed image formats that can sometimes be as large as 40MB per shot. This naturally creates great volumes of data especially when I am shooting in rapid succession. That’s why the FreeAgent Go hard drive became an essential part of my equipment on this 10-day trip,” he said.

“I stored all the photos in it after the photo shoot. My FreeAgent Go hard drive enabled me to enjoy the attractive scenery and store all my exciting memories. I definitely appreciate its stability and will include it as part of my equipment wherever and whenever I have to go on long trips in the future – it has become like a close friend.”

Zhang Hua and Zhu Enguang also shared Huang’s view. A key requirement of this tour was staying outdoors for long periods to shoot a huge number of photos, so they needed a hard drive that not only provided large storage capacity but one that was slim, portable and reliable.

Huang said, “I hesitated when my colleagues recommended I take the Seagate 500GB portable hard drive because my luggage was already so heavy with lots of photographic equipment, and I had the experience of using a bulky hard drive before. But, when I received Seagate’s FreeAgent Go I was surprised by its portability. It is not an exaggeration to describe it as a “slim device,” as it is as small as a passport, completely portable and does not need an external electrical supply.”

Elsewhere on the tour, famous female photographer Zhang Hua chose the itinerary themed “lifestyle and urban culture” for her tour. This amazing trip brought Ms. Zhang a new appreciation of the art and culture of the nation. “South Africa has a long-standing artistic culture, which is far richer than I could have imagined,” she said. “As a professional photographer, I’d like to record everything related to art through my lens. I tried hard to capture every vivid motion I saw and the delicate decoration of the buildings, hoping to present the real artistic life of South Africa.

“During this media tour, I backed up all the high-definition photos on the Seagate FreeAgent Go hard drive to avoid losing any precious memories. I relied heavily on its ease of use, reliability, amazing storage capacity and portability,” said Zhang.

This reliability proved to be a savior for Zhang on her return to China. “I am so glad I backed-up all my work on the FreeAgent Go hard drive as on the return flight to China, my laptop suddenly crashed and I had to reformat the system,” she said. “I lost all the photos which had not been saved. Thanks to Seagate, I was so relieved when I turned on the FreeAgent Go hard drive and found that all the backup photos were properly stored inside. I couldn’t imagine what would have happened if I hadn’t taken the FreeAgent Go hard drive with me on this trip.”

Outstanding pictures anytime, anywhere

Mr Banseng Teh, Seagate’s vice president and managing director said, “Seagate is proud to have successfully assisted these photographers during the tour in South Africa. The FreeAgent Go portable hard drive proved its value time and time again and became an essential piece of equipment, and there is no doubt that it will be the optimal choice for professional photographers and photography lovers to store and back up their shots.

Mr Teh continued: “The stylish FreeAgent Go hard drives provide an absolutely new storage solution, with large storage capacity, compact design and outstanding performance, allowing you to store and back-up all of your precious digital content, anytime, anywhere.”

FreeAgent™ Go Hard Drives and Components

FreeAgent™ Go hard drives provide ultra-thin design that’s as stylish as it is striking, as well as four different color choices to suit your style. They are already on sale in America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.

The FreeAgent™ Go also provides backup and sync; it automatically backs-up all your material in case of crashes or viruses, so you don’t have to worry about it. The sync function aligns the content of your home and office computers so you always have the latest versions of your work.

About Seagate

Seagate is the worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and marketing of hard disk drives and storage solutions, providing products for a wide-range of applications, including Enterprise, Desktop, Mobile Computing, Consumer Electronics and Branded Solutions. Seagate’s business model leverages technology leadership and world-class manufacturing to deliver industry-leading innovation and quality to its global customers, with the goal of being the time-to-market leader in all markets in which it participates. The company is committed to providing award-winning products, customer support and reliability to meet the world’s growing demand for information storage. Seagate can be found around the globe and athttp://www.seagate.com.

Seagate, Seagate Technology and the Wave logo are registered trademarks of Seagate Technology LLC or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. FreeAgent is either a trademark or registered trademark of Seagate Technology LLC or one of its affiliated companies in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. When referring to hard drive capacity, one gigabyte, or GB, equals one billion bytes and one terabyte, or TB, equals one trillion bytes. Quantitative usage examples for various applications are for illustrative purposes. Actual quantities will vary based on various factors, including file size, file format, features and application software.

Media professionals can access broadcast and web-ready videos and photos at Seagate's Broadcast Center -http://seagate.mediaseed.tv/

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