n Seagate Technology, the No. 1 player in the cutthroat hard-disk drive business, said that it will beef up its services division by acquiring a company that makes زe-discoveryس software that helps corporations, attorneys and prosecutors sift through e-mails and other records more efficiently.

Seagate will pay an undisclosed amount for MetaLincs, a San Jose company with about 50 employees. Its software sorts through mountains of e-mails, documents and other data to produce a visual analysis of what people were talking about and other patterns. The software zeroes in on e-mails and documents relevant to a particular case, shaving legal fees, for example, that can run hundreds of dollars per hour.

MetaLincs software has been used by clients as diverse as Ernst AND Young, Merrill Lynch, Cypress Semiconductor and the Justice Department.