Scotts Valley (CA) - Seagate today confirmed that it will be jumping into the wireless storage market by introducing an external hard drive in the second quarter of this year. The drive, previously code-named "Crickett," will be offering 10 GB of storage space initially and is scheduled to expand to up to 20 GB later on.

Seagate yesterday formally announced the drive, which goes by the name "Dave". The shortcut stands for "Digital Audio Video Experience" and, according to Seagate, describes an "enabling technology" that will offer a compact alternative to expand the storage capacity of mobile devices that support Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connectivity.

The Dave drive, scheduled to debut with a 10 GB 1" perpendicular hard drive in the second quarter of this year, has the footprint of a credit card. It is about, 0.47" thick, which compares to about nine credit cards stacked on top of each other. The wireless range of the Bluetooth version of the drive is about 30 feet.

The Dave drive

Seagate claims that an external storage solution allows a more flexible use of digital content on multiple devices, while turning a mobile phone into a "DVR/MP3 powerhouse". Also, Seagate says that Dave is "ideal for portable use with long-lasting battery performance."

The Dave drive is likely to be highest capacity storage solution, when it will be introduced in Q2, outpacing the 4 GB integrated hard drive storage of the Nokia N91 music phone and offering five times the capacity of today's largest microSD flash memory cards. However, with a rumored price of "less than $200," the drive will also be substantially be more expensive than those 2 GB flash cards, which currently retail for an average of $54, according to Pricegrabber.com.