Seagate Technology

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Seagate Technology plc

logo
legal form public limited company
ISIN IE00B58JVZ52
founding 1979
Seat Dublin , Ireland
management Stephen J. Luczo, CEO
Number of employees 41,000
sales 10,771,000,000 USD
Branch Mass storage
Website www.seagate.com
As of June 30, 2017

Seagate Technology is a Dublin- based hard drive and tape drive manufacturer with headquarters in Cupertino , California . Seagate is the oldest and largest independent hard drive manufacturer. Seagate has shipped a billion hard drives with a total of 79 exabytes of storage space since its inception through 2008  , and stated that it intends to ship an additional billion drives in the next five years. The company's shares are listed on NASDAQ .

history

Logo from 2002 to 2015

The company was founded in 1979 by Alan Shugart and Finis Conner as Shugart Technology . The first product was the 5 megabyte ST-506 hard drive released in 1980 : the first hard drive in a 5.25-inch form factor (and with an ST506 interface ). Sales were good and the company grew. Soon after, Seagate introduced a 10 megabyte version of the ST-506, the ST-412. Seagate later also developed hard drives for personal computers and supplied IBM in large numbers.

Through the 1980s Seagate mainly sold hard drives that were improvements on the original design of the ST-506. The ST-225 (20 megabytes) and the ST-251 (40 megabytes) were often sold 5.25 "hard disks with MFM interface, which were also offered as RLL versions (ST238R or ST277R). The head positioning was carried out with these Models have stepper motors , which made them slow compared to drives with linear drives . Many other manufacturers (for example Rodime, BASF , MiniScribe and also Western Digital ) also used stepper motors to move the heads. Well-known Seagate drives without stepper motor were for example ST-4038 (30 megabytes) or the ST-4096 (80 megabytes). Seagate abandoned the use of stepper motors in the early 1990s. The ST351A / X, a 40 megabyte hard drive that works with both the ATA and the XT-Bus was the last hard drive in which a stepper motor was used.

Opened Seagate ST-225 with ST-412 interface
Seagate Medalist 6531 - Model: ST36531A

In 1985 Finis Conner left Seagate Technology and founded his own company Conner Peripherals in 1986 . Conner Peripherals specialized in small form factor hard drives for notebooks and desktop computers, but tape drives were also produced by Conner. After ten years as an independent company, Conner Peripherals went back to Seagate Technology in 1996. In 1989, Seagate entered the high-end hard drive market with the acquisition of Control Data's storage division .

In 1992, Seagate introduced the Barracuda , the first hard drive with 7200 min -1 a rotation speed. This was followed by 1996, the Cheetah , the first hard drive with 10,000 min -1 . 2000 followed with the Seagate X15, the first hard drive with 15,000 min -1 . Seagate introduced in 1997 with the "Medalist Pro" also the first ATA hard drive running at 7200 min -1 one.

In 2005, the tape drive division , which was spun off as Seagate Removable Storage Systems in 2000 and renamed Certance in 2003, was sold to Quantum .

In late 2005, Seagate announced its intention to acquire Maxtor Corporation through an approximately $ 1.9 billion share swap . The takeover was completed in May 2006, the Maxtor brand was retained for a while but later disappeared from the market. Seagate has been using it again since the Maxtor M3 Portable , which was introduced in 2016 .

In the late 1990s and again since mid-2005, Seagate gave a five-year warranty on most of its hard drive models. From January 3, 2009 to December 2011, there was a three-year warranty on PC and notebook hard drives for private customers. As of January 1, 2012, the guarantee was reduced again to 1 year, and since July 1, 2012, it has been increased to two years. Different warranty periods apply to OEM customers and OEM hard drives from Seagate.

In August 2007, a Chinese company tried to take over Seagate. The US government was extremely critical of the possible takeover of the global market leader for hard drives. It was feared that China could manipulate hard drives to gain access to data.

Seagate has been offering a hard drive with a capacity of 1.5 terabytes since August 2008, in 2010 it was already 2 terabytes, and shortly afterwards Seagate presented a 3 terabyte hard drive. The Barracuda 7200.12 series has been on the market since the end of 2008, in which disks with 500 GB each are installed for the first time . In September 2011 Seagate was the first hard drive manufacturer to present a 3.5-inch external hard drive with 4 TB of storage. In the spring of 2016, the company presented helium- filled hard drives with 8 TB and 10 TB of storage space. Seagate will launch a 16-Tbyte hard drive in 2019.

In April 2011 Seagate bought Samsung Electronics' hard drive division . In May 2012 Seagate acquired the French hard drive manufacturer LaCie .

Problems

At the turn of the year 2008/2009 it became apparent that many models of the 7200.11 and 7200.12 series had been produced incorrectly. This could lead to a complete failure of the hard drive. However, depending on the state of the hard disk, the error could be corrected by a software update. This had to be requested by the user himself, as there were specially tailored updates depending on the model and condition.

In February 2016, it became known that an American law firm was preparing a class action lawsuit against Seagate. The reason for this is that hard drives with a capacity of 3 TB from the Barracuda and Backup Plus External series are said to be particularly affected by failures.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Form 10-K Report 2016. Accessed September 9, 2017 .
  2. ↑ https://gigaom.com/2012/08/22/report-the-home-solyndra-built-has-found-a-new-buyer/
  3. ↑ Seagate shipped a billion hard drives. In: Heise online . Retrieved April 23, 2008 .
  4. ↑ http://www.designtagebuch.de/seagate-bekommen-neues-logo/
  5. ↑ Seagate reduces product warranty for private customers. In: Heise online . Retrieved December 12, 2008 .
  6. ↑ Hard drives: Seagate and Western Digital with shorter warranty periods. Retrieved December 19, 2011 .
  7. ↑ Seagate reduces warranty on Barracuda and Momentus hard drives. Retrieved June 2, 2013 .
  8. ↑ Seagate and the guarantee: Now an extension of the term has been announced. Retrieved June 2, 2013 .
  9. ↑ Seagate extends hard drive warranty (again). Retrieved June 2, 2013 .
  10. ↑ Warranty information for Seagate OEM customers. Retrieved June 2, 2013 .
  11. ↑ Guarantee for "OEM" hard drives. Retrieved June 2, 2013 .
  12. ↑ Seagate boss: "The US government is freaking out". In: Heise online . Retrieved August 25, 2007 .
  13. ↑ heise online: Seagate: 10 TB hard drive with helium filling. In: heise online. Retrieved August 1, 2016 .
  14. ↑ Seagate brings 16 TB HAMR hard drive . heise.de. December 3, 2018. Retrieved December 14, 2018.
  15. ↑ Samsung sells hard drive division to Seagate. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on May 22, 2012 ; Retrieved April 19, 2011 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.channelpartner.de
  16. ↑ Four Seagate hard drive series in danger of failure. In: Heise online . January 17, 2009, accessed June 5, 2012 .
  17. ↑ heise online: US law firm prepares class action against Seagate. In: heise online. Retrieved August 1, 2016 .
  18. ^ Photographers Beware: Seagate Slapped with a Class Action Suit Over Bad Hard Drives. In: PetaPixel. February 2, 2016, accessed August 1, 2016 .