Seagate to buy Maxtor for $1.9 Billion!

[Mehen]

http://theinquirer.net/?article=28482

Which leads to the question: why hasn't either of those companies put out some competition for the 74GB Raptor?

[Jammrock]

They consider it a niche market that won't give them enough financial return to justify the development.

After this move we will be down to 5 HDD makers: Toshiba (laptop only, afaik), Fujitsu, Hitachi, WD and Seagate. Hopefully this ends up being a good thing.

[Mcollector]

Someone I knew who worked at WD said they didn't really make their own complete HDDs. She said they bought parts and assembled them, which was one reason WD was sensitive to price increases for materials (because they are a 3rd party buyer) and periodically get themselves into financial trouble vis-a-vis other HDD makers like Seagate.

So Maxtor buys Quantum, and Seagate buys Maxtor. Well, we still have a bit more competition in the HDD realm than in the video card/GPU realm.

[Guru]

http://www.seagatemaxtor.com/

[Technoid]

One down, more to follow

[agallag]

I used to use Quantum drives exclusively. Never had any problems with them, ever. When Maxtor bought them, I switched to Maxtor drives. I've had one DOA, and the rest have worked without a single glitch. I guess I'll be switching to Seagate now, hopefully I'll have the same kind of luck with them. Considering Seagate's following by so many murcers, odds are good.

Fingers are crossed.

[Claymonkey]

As long as Seagate doesn't go the way of Maxtor. I've never had more drives die than i have form Maxtor.

[schmosef]

As long as Seagate doesn't go the way of Maxtor. I've never had more drives die than i have form Maxtor.

Yep

I stopped selling Maxtor drives a long time ago.

[Dr Mordrid]

My experience is the opposite: I've had several Seagates die almost on arrival but all but one Maxtor drive I've bought over the last several years, over 30 of 'em, are still running strong....



Dr. Mordrid

[Tjalfe]

Having worked at a computer repair place, I have seen bad hdd's of every make. We sold Maxtors ourselves, and saw really no higher return rate on those than we saw dead other makes. One thing I really liked about maxtor was the very fast replacement service, often replacing the drive with one of larger capacity

[Jammrock]

Having worked at a computer repair place, I have seen bad hdd's of every make. We sold Maxtors ourselves, and saw really no higher return rate on those than we saw dead other makes. One thing I really liked about maxtor was the very fast replacement service, often replacing the drive with one of larger capacity

Working in corporate IT I've seen it all, too. Hitachi laptop drives are the WORST! In fact, I have one in the firewire craddle attempting data recovery right now. We've had those POSs die in multiple systems and multiple batches. And when the likes of Dell and Toshiba send back refurbs to replace the broken drives, they are typically Fujitsu or Toshiba drives.

But yeah, I've seen them all die. Quantum, Maxtor, WD, IBM, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Toshiba, Seagate ... It all comes down to "did I get a good batch?"

Jammrock

[Mehen]

Have a 13gb quantum fireball that is STILL running in an old 500mhz which is acting as a server (on 24/7 for the last few years). Have seen a LOT of maxtors fail, including a few brand new SATA ones, never got to work with too many Seagate so I can't make proper judgement on them. I've seen a few WD fail, but they were all fairly old ones (20gb-40gb range).

I haven't worked with all too many drives, but I completely agree with: "It all comes down to "did I get a good batch?" "

[Dr Mordrid]

One thing I really liked about maxtor was the very fast replacement service, often replacing the drive with one of larger capacity

My experience as well. The one Maxtor that died was replaced within 48 hours.

Not too shabby

EDIT: Seagate and Maxtor are #1 and #2 respectively in the HDD market, accounting for 46% of the total sales in that sector. Both the US and EU have rather strong anti-trust laws and could pose a barrier to such a merger.

Dr. Mordrid

[Mcollector]

The drives I've seen fail the most are WD. The particular ones ranged from 200 MB to 20 GB. The old under 1 GB WD drives, early to mid 850 MB and 540 MB models specifically, didn't support Mode 3 transfers properly even though they were supposed to, and reported themselves as Mode 3 capable in their firmware. The black cased 540/850 MB HDDs wouldn't run reliably over Mode 2; the silver cased drives of the same capacity *would* run Mode 3 properly.

After that, I switched to IBM, which for a while were argueably the best. Went back to WD briefly after the IBM Deathstar fiasco, but saw some problems w/ some WD drives up to 20G (got one in the process of failing now, just a month or 2 after the 3-year warranty expired). Haven't tried the later/larger ones. Quantums I always viewed as cheap, and saw some problems with earlier ones. A high speed, 4G Seagate model was also a turkey. Tried a few more recent Quantums and Maxtors w/o problems. All HDD manufacturers have had a turkey or two, but I've seen more dead WD's than anything else.

Got REALLY nervous when all HDD manufacturers went to 1 year warranties on ATA drives (guess that was when they all started manufacturing in China). Went looking for the older NOS drives that still had 3 year warranties back then. I see Seagate now has 5-year warranties on new ATA Seagates, but I see only 1 year warranties on WD ATA HDDs (100 to 200G capacities). I'm leaning toward Seagates, but I'm not sold on any one brand anymore. I don't see a cadillac of HDD manufacturers these days; I just go for name brands, 7200+ RPM w/ long warranties.

[Nicram]

I still got one WD 74MB that is working fine & two SeaGate HDD (2,5GB & 20GB). All of them working from many years without problems. Now i got Maxtor 60GB from about 3 years & it is working fine. For me there is no winner or looser