Storage manufacturer Seagate is looking to offer consumers more piece of mind with its external storage products—this time by bundling two years’s coverage under its SafetyNet data recovery services into the cost of its new GoFlex Turbo external hard drive. If, at any point within two years of purchase, the drive goes belly-up, customers just need to call Seagate: the company will try to recover your data remotely, and—if that fails—users can ship the drive to Seagate’s SRS labs to attempt recovery.
“With this new GoFlex Turbo performance drive, it is our aim to provide more peace of mind for the people who choose Seagate to back up and store their valued digital assets,” said Seagate VP and retail product group general manager Patrick Connolly, in a statement. “When our products are used as a backup to a primary system or even as supplemental storage, people should know that they can get a further layer of assurance that their data will be there when they need it.”
To attempt remote recovery, the drive has to be physically operational (obviously) and users will need a second storage device or other destination for the recovered data—they may also have to install software to enable Seagate’s remote access. If the drive has to go to the lab, Seagate’s SafetyNet policy doesn’t cover shipping costs—but at least if they’re not able to recover the data, the company will cover the cover of shipping the drive back to you if you’d like to try your luck with another recovery service. If Seagate can recover the data, they ship it back on a replacement drive or other media, securely destroying the original. The service can be used only once in the two year period, and, obviously, depending what happened to a drive, not all data may be recoverable.
The GoFlex Turbo drives with SafetyNet feature USB 3.0 high-speed connectivity (backward compatible to USB 2.0), are available now for $119.99 for a 500GB drive and $139.99 for a 750 GB drive.
