Seagate Technology
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Type | Public (NASDAQ: STX) |
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| Founded | 1979 |
| Headquarters |  Scotts Valley, California, United States |
| Key people | Alan Shugart, (Founder) Stephen J. Luczo, (Chairman, CEO and President) Bob Whitmore, ((CTO)) Pat O'Malley (CFO) Brian Dexheimer (Division President, Consumer Solutions) |
| Industry | Computer hardware |
| Products | Barracuda Cheetah Seagate BlackArmor Seagate FreeAgent Seagate Replica Seagate Showcase Maxtor Momentus Savvio |
| Revenue | ▲ US$ 12.708 billion (2008)[1] |
| Operating income | ▲ US$ 1.376 billion (2008)[1] |
| Net income | ▲ US$ 1.262 billion (2008)[1] |
| Employees | 54,000[1] |
| Subsidiaries | Maxtor |
| Website | www.seagate.com |
Seagate (NASDAQ: STX) is a manufacturer of hard drives and storage solutions founded in 1979 as Shugart Techologies and is based in Scotts Valley, California.
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[edit] History
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This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2008) |
[edit] Early history
Their first product (released in 1980) was the 5-megabyte ST-506, the first hard disc to fit the 5.25-inch form factor of the (by then famous) Shugart "mini-floppy" drive. The hard disc was a hit, and was later released in a 10-megabyte version, the ST-412.
In the early 1980s, Seagate secured a contract as a major OEM supplier for the IBM XT, IBM's first personal computer to contain a hard disk. The large volumes of units sold to IBM, as IBM was the dominant supplier of PCs at the time, fueled Seagate's early growth.
Finis Conner left Seagate in early 1985 and founded Conner Peripherals, which originally specialized in small-form-factor drives for portable computers. Conner Peripherals also entered the tape drive business with its purchase of Archive Corporation. After ten years as an independent company, Conner rejoined Seagate in a 1996 merger.
In 1989, facing increased competition and margin pressure, Seagate acquired Control Data's MPI/Imprimis (CDC) disk storage division. This acquisition gave Seagate access to CDC's voice-coil and disk-manufacturing patents. As well, the purchase provided access to a high-end server customer base and the first 5,400 RPM drives on the market (the CDC Elite series).
[edit] 1990s
1992 - (November) Seagate introduced the Barracuda disc drives, the industry's first hard disk with a 7200 RPM spindle speed. Seagate was the first introduced to market disc drive with shock-sensing technology for 2.5-inch disc drives.
1993 - (May) Seagate was the first to ships 50 millionth disc drive in the disc drive industry.
1996 - (February) Merges with Conner Peripherals to form world's largest independent hard-drive manufacturer. (October) Seagate introduced the Cheetah, the industry's first hard disk with a 10,000-RPM spindle speed.
1997 - (October) Seagate introduces world's first Fibre Channel interface disc drive. Seagate introduces first 7,200-RPM disc drives with Ultra-ATA technology for desktop computers.
1998 - (March) Seagate Research produces 1 billionth magnetic recording head. (August) Seagate Research is established in Pittsburgh, PA-USA.
1999 - (April) Seagate ships its 250 millionth disc drive in the disc drive industry.
[edit] 2000s
2000 - (February) Introduces world's first 15,000-RPM disc drive, the Cheetah X15. (November) Unveils the world's highest-capacity disc drive, the Barracuda 180-GB.
2001 - (March) Second-generation Cheetah X15 introduced, one year ahead of the competition. (October) Microsoft Xbox game console ships with Seagate disc drives.
2002 - (May) Introduces Cheetah 15K.3, its third-generation 15,000-RPM drive, one year ahead of the competition. (November) Demonstrates perpendicular-recording areal density of 100 gigabits per square inch. Delivers industry's first Serial ATA disc drive, the Barracuda ATA V. (December) Re-enters the public market (NYSE: STX).
2003 - (June) Seagate re-entered the notebook market with its 2.5-inch Momentous hard drive. In 2005, Seagate started an innovation called the "Pocket Hard Drive," a palm-sized external-storage device that could hold 5 gigabytes of data. Just three years later, a compact Seagate FreeAgent Go portable hard drive could store 250 gigabytes. (September) Announces highest areal density at 100-GB per platter.
2004 - (February) Announces Savvio, the industry's first 2.5-inch enterprise disc drive. (June) Launches 12 new products aimed at applications like MP3 players, DVRs, notebook computers, PCs, servers and data centers.
2005 - (March) Ships 10 millionth 15,000-RPM disc drive. (September) Acquires Mirra, Inc. (November) Acquires ActionFront Data Recovery Labs.
2006 - (January) Named 2006 "Company of the Year" by Forbes Magazine. (February) Introduces world's first 12-GB 1-inch disc drive. (April) Introduces world's first 750-GB hard drive. (May) Seagate announced plans to acquire Maxtor. The all-stock deal was worth $1.9 billion. The transaction was completed in May 2006. With the Maxtor acquisition, Seagate significantly increased its scale and expanded its line of retail storage products, tapping the fast-growing home and small-business markets. Seagate's Maxtor OneTouch and FreeAgent line of external hard drives, with storage capacities of up to 1.5 terabytes, are used to store, share, protect and back up digital content like photos, videos, games and music. (October) Ships world's first hybrid hard drive.
2007 - (March) Seagate acquires EVault. Seagate ships world's first laptop drives with Full Disk Encryption (FDE) technology. (September) Seagate responded with a 1-terabyte desktop hard drive that uses government-grade encryption technology (Full Disc Encryption or FDE) to prevent unauthorized access to data on lost or stolen hard drives or systems. Along with its Barracuda FDE hard drive, Seagate also announced a 250-gigabyte, 2.5-inch hard drive, the Momentus 5400.4, the world's first notebook drive with built-in encryption.
2008 - (March) Seagate acquires MetaLINCS. (April) Seagate becomes the first to ship 1 billion hard drives. (June) Seagate announced a 2.5-inch enterprise solution, the Savvio 10K.3 hard drive, which consumed 70 percent less power than traditional 3.5-inch drives and offered 300 gigabytes of capacity. Market researcher IDC predicts that such small form factor enterprise drives will outnumber 3.5-inch enterprise shipments by 2010. Seagate announces world's first 1.5-TB hard drive.
Seagate Technology has replaced its top two executives and said it plans to cut 800 jobs — 10 percent of its U.S. work force — as the hard drive maker endures a bruising slowdown in technology spending. Its stock fell more than 15 percent. In a surprise move, the Scotts Valley-based company announced that William Watkins, 56, Seagate's chief executive since 2004, and Dave Wickersham, 52, the president and chief operating officer, had both left the company, effective immediately.
[edit] Corporate affairs
Seagate was traded for most of its life as a public company under the symbol “SGAT” on the NASDAQ system, then moved to the NYSE system under the symbol “SEG” in the 1990s. In 2000, the company was taken private by an investment group composed of Seagate management, Silver Lake Partners, Texas Pacific Group and others in a three-way merger-spinoff with Veritas Software; Veritas merged with Seagate, which was bought by the investment group. Veritas was then immediately spun off to shareholders, gaining rights to Seagate Software Network and Storage Management Group (with products such as Backup Exec), as well as Seagate's shares in SanDisk and Dragon Systems. Seagate Software Information Management Group was renamed Crystal Decisions in May 2001. Seagate re-entered the public market in December 2002 on the NYSE as "STX."
[edit] Firmware problems with SATA disks
In late 2008 and still in 2009 , many users of Seagate hard drives had begun to experience sudden failures of their drives where the drive would spin up, but not be recognized by a PC. It was soon found that the issue was most likely linked to a firmware bug. After much controversy among 7200.11 drive owners due to a lack of response from Seagate on this issue, Seagate confirmed the issue in late January 2009. The company announced that they were working on new firmware to resolve the issue, and that they would offer free data recovery to customers who had data made inaccessible by this issue. [2] The firmware bug is caused by an off-by-one error famously known as the 7200.11 BSY Error, which sets the drive event log to an invalid location causing the drive to become inaccessible.
The affected hard drive families are:
- Barracuda 7200.11[3][4]
- Barracuda ES.2[5]
- DiamondMax 22[6][7]
- SV35.3 and SV35.4[8]
[edit] Antecedents
- Conner Peripherals
- CDC Imprimis
- Maxtor
- MiniScribe
- Quantum Corp's hard drive division
- Digital Equipment Corporation's hard drive division
[edit] References
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Seagate Technology |
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