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Western Digital: Western Digital Corporation (WDC) is the second largest computer hard disk drive manufacturer in the world. They have a long history as an integrated circuit maker and a storage products company. Founded as General Digital in April 1970 by Motorola employee Alvin B. Phillips, the company initially manufactured MOS test equipment. Then, with start-up capital provided by several individual investors and industrial giant Emerson Electric Company, the company specialized in making semiconductors. It became Western Digital in 1971 and soon after launched its first product, the WD1402A UART. The WD1771 and its kin were WDC's first entries into the data storage industry.
In 1988, WDC bought the hard drive production assets of computer hardware maker Tandon. The "Centaur" series of ATA and XT attachment drives resulted.
In 2001, WDC became the first manufacturer to offer mainstream ATA hard disk drives with 8 MB of cache buffer (instead of the 2 MB of buffer commonly found in desktop drives at the time). The first drive with 8 MB cache was the 100 GB WD1000JB; other models with capacities from 40 GB to 250 GB soon followed.
In 2003, WDC offered the first 10,000 rpm Serial ATA HDD: the WD360GD "Raptor". It has a capacity of 36 GB and an average access time of less than 6 ms.
In 2006, WDC introduced its My Book line of mass market external hard drives that feature a compact book-like design.
In 2007, WDC released several editions of a single 1 TB hard drive.
In 2008, WDC announced the next generation of its 10,000 rpm SATA WD Raptor series of hard drives.
In 2009, WDC shipped the first 2 TB internal hard drive and announced the first 1 TB mobile hard disk drive, which shipped as both a Passport series portable USB drive as well as a Scorpio Blue series notebook drive. Also in this year, the acquisition of Siliconsystems, Inc. permitted WDC to enter the solid-state drive market.
In 2010, WDC announced the first 3 TB internal hard disk drive.
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TOP 2 |
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Seagate: Seagate Technology is a hard drive and storage solution manufacturer that was founded in 1979 by Alan Shugart and Finis Conner. Based in Scotts Valley, California and registered in the Cayman Islands, the company was initially founded under the name "Shugart Technology." As one of the world's biggest computer hard disk drive manufacturers, Seagate's products can be found in many types of computers (i.e. servers, desktops, laptops) and consumer devices (i.e. digital video recorders, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox, Creative Zen Micro). Seagate is also the world's oldest independent hard disk drive manufacturer. Their first product released in 1980 was the ST-506, the first hard disk that fit into the 5.25" form factor of the Shugart "mini-floppy" drive. In the early 1980s, Seagate became a major OEM supplier for IBM's first personal computer (PC) to contain a hard disk drive, the XT, which resulted in large volumes of sales (as IBM was the dominant supplier of PCs at the time). Throughout the 1980s, Seagate mainly sold 'simple' hard disks which were derivatives of the original ST-506 design. These included the popular ST-225 20 MB disks and ST-251 40 MB disks but Seagate also sold other disks equipped with the faster voice coil technology. After co-founder Finis Conner left Seagate in early 1985 and following an unsuccessful attempt at starting his own company, he was employed briefly as CEO at Computer Memories Inc. (CMI). Connor then founded Conner Peripherals in 1986, which originally offered small-form-factor drives for laptops, but later also offered tape drives after the purchase of Archive Corporation. In 1996, after ten years as an independent company, Conner Peripherals merged with Seagate.
In 1989, Seagate acquired Control Data Corporation's (CDC) MPI/Imprimis disk storage division to gain access to their competitive advanced head development capabilities as well as their voice coil and disk-manufacturing patents. The purchase also gave access to a high end server customer base and the first 5400 RPM drives on the market, the CDC Elite series.
Notable Seagate products included the Barracuda in 1992, the industry's first hard disk with a 7200 RPM spindle speed; the Cheetah in 1996, the first 10,000 RPM disk; the Medalist Pro 7200 range in 1997, the first ATA disk with a 7200 RPM spindle; the X15 in 2000, with a speed of 15,000 RPM; and the innovative "pocket hard drive" in 2005.
In the 1990s, Seagate was mostly traded as a public company under the symbol “SGAT” on the NASDAQ system, later changing to the "SEG" symbol after moving to the NYSE system. In the mid-to-late 1990s, Seagate began to acquire storage software companies. It sold its software division to Veritas resulting in them becoming one of Veritas' largest shareholders.
In 2000, Seagate was made private by an investment group consisting of Seagate management, Silver Lake Partners and Texas Pacific Group. There was a 3-way merger-spinoff with Veritas Software Veritas merged with Seagate, which was bought by the investment group. Immediately following, Veritas was spun off to shareholders, gaining rights to Seagate Software Network and Storage Management Group, as well as Seagate's shares in SanDisk and Dragon Systems. In May 2001, Seagate Software Information Management Group was renamed Crystal Decisions. In December 2002, Seagate re-entered the public market under the symbol "STX" on the NYSE. In December 2005, Seagate acquired rival hard disk drive manufacturer Maxtor in an all-stock deal that totaled $1.9 billion. The firms said the combination would be 10-20% accretive on a cash EPS basis after the first year of combined operations, resulting in a savings of $300 million in operating expenses. The transaction was completed in May 2006. |
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TOP 3 |
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Iomega: Iomega is a producer of consumer storage hardware that was founded on April 2, 1980 in the United States. The company came into existence in 1979 when Tony Radman, Renee Radman, David Bailey and David Norton, four engineers working at an IBM facility in Tucson, Arizona, came up with a clever idea to keep the read/write heads of a magnetic storage device from crashing into its rotating platter and causing data loss. When IBM turned down their proposal by stating that the idea would never work, the four engineers were granted permission to use their idea and form their own company.
Iomega's first signature product, the industry’s first high-capacity removable storage, was based on this crash-proof technology. Today, their product range includes external, portable and networking storage devices.
In June 2008, Iomega was purchased by EMC Corporation, making it the SOHO/SMB arm of the world’s largest storage company. |
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TOP 4 |
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Lacie: LaCie is a computer hardware company that was initially two separate storage companies, La Cie Ltd. and électronique d2. The company specializes in external and portable hard drives, RAID arrays, optical drives, and computer monitors.
La Cie Ltd. was an American company that was founded in July 1987 in Tigard, Oregon by Joel Kamerman, his parents Robert and Tudy Kamerman, and Roger Bates. Joel Kamerman was La Cie's president and general manager from July 1987 through to December 1995. In December 1990, Plus Development, a subsidiary of the storage manufacturer Quantum, acquired La Cie. This allowed La Cie to be the only manufacturer permitted to make Apple-branded external SCSI hard drives using Quantum's hard disks.
électronique d2 was a French company founded in 1989 by Pierre Fournier and Philippe Spruch. The company initially operated from their apartment in Paris' 14th arrondissement. électronique d2 started out assembling hard drives in external SCSI casings and selling them as peripheral devices.
électronique d2 acquired La Cie in 1995 and decided to adopt the name LaCie in 1998. |
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TOP 5 |
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Verbatim: Verbatim Americas, LLC is a company that markets storage media and flash memory products. Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, the company was founded in 1969 and has been a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corporation of Japan since 1990. |
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