Seagate Technology has today announced that it completed the acquisition of Samsung Electronics' hard drive unit. Worth $1.4 billion, this deal covers the assets, infrastructure and employees of Samsung's HDD business and is supposed to boost Seagate's production capacity, R&D strength and customer access in China, Southeast Asia, Brazil, Germany and the Russian Federation.

As part of the agreement, Seagate will be supplying HDDs for Samsung PCs, notebooks and consumer electronics devices, while the South Korean giant will provide Seagate with semiconductor products needed for enterprise solid state drives (SSDs), solid-state hybrid drives and other products. Moreover, the two companies have signed an extended patent cross-license agreement, and have agreed to collaborate on the development of enterprise storage solutions.

"Together, Seagate and Samsung have aligned our current and future product development efforts and roadmaps in order to accelerate time-to-market efficiency for new products and position us to better address the increasing demands for storage," said Steve Luczo, Seagate chairman, president and CEO. "It is an exciting time in the industry with rapidly evolving opportunities in many markets including mobile computing, cloud computing, and solid state storage."

To ensure a smooth transition, Seagate is going to continue selling certain HDDs under the Samsung brand name for 12 months. Seagate didn't say anything but it's probable the Samsung-branded drives will include a warranty period comparable to that of the latest Barracudas.