Thursday, January 4th 2024
Legendary PC Storage Brand Plextor to Shut Down
Plextor, one of the most iconic names in PC storage once known for high performance and quality, has announced it will cease operations. Parent company Kioxia has decided to retire the Plextor brand name for solid state drives (SSDs). Instead, it will market products under its Solid State Storage Technology Corporation (SSSTC) brand going forward. The move comes after Kioxia acquired Plextor and its parent company Lite-On's SSD business back in 2019. Since then, Plextor has struggled to keep pace with new storage technologies. With PCIe Gen 4 and PCIe Gen 5 SSD controllers coming to market, Plextor failed to adopt the new Phison and InnoGrit platforms, instead sticking with Marvell controllers, lagging behind at that time.
Now, SSSTC and Kioxia will strictly focus SSD sales on the enterprise, data center, and industrial segments rather than the consumer market. The Plextor website is already redirecting to SSSTC.com, which no longer lists any drives for client PCs. While current Plextor SSD owners will continue to receive warranty support and RMA services, no new Plextor drives are expected to be released. The company had a history stretching back over 30 years of making top-performing optical disk drives and SSDs. Similarly to OCZ after its acquisition by Toshiba, the Plextor name will now fade into history. But in the fast-moving storage business, companies live and die by their ability to adopt cutting-edge technologies. Hence, companies are always on the edge of their seats, trying to survive.
Sources:
HKEPC, via Tom's Hardware
Now, SSSTC and Kioxia will strictly focus SSD sales on the enterprise, data center, and industrial segments rather than the consumer market. The Plextor website is already redirecting to SSSTC.com, which no longer lists any drives for client PCs. While current Plextor SSD owners will continue to receive warranty support and RMA services, no new Plextor drives are expected to be released. The company had a history stretching back over 30 years of making top-performing optical disk drives and SSDs. Similarly to OCZ after its acquisition by Toshiba, the Plextor name will now fade into history. But in the fast-moving storage business, companies live and die by their ability to adopt cutting-edge technologies. Hence, companies are always on the edge of their seats, trying to survive.
41 Comments on Legendary PC Storage Brand Plextor to Shut Down
Good luck to all the employees.
And the reason of its death is because CD/DVD even Blu rays are being phase out.
Decent disk drives too, to be honest, still have some of them kicking around in older workstations at my job.
I bet they're still working !
Kioxia has thrown another big brand name in the garbage can.
They've been nothing more than a brand name sold to other companies to use under license for about three decades and have contributed absolutely nothing of value to the industry during that time. The Plextor optical and SSD products since then have just been re-branded Lite-On units since 2010-2011 with nothing more than a new Western-friendly label. I'm not sure why they bothered - Lite-On have a fine reputation in the West these days...
Thought they went belly up long ago.
Plextor Inc (the company responsible for those early CD drives in the '90s) still exists as an entity but they've not done anything other than slowly wind-down their PC-CDROM/CDRW manufacturing between 2002 and 2009 as far as I can see. They make scientific instruments and testing equipment only.
It is sad to see the name die, but as a consumer; I'm not buying an SSD because it has the Plextor name on it. I won't use this as an opportunity to rant more about how mergers and acquisitions continue to erode capitalism. I think if they hadn't been acquired, Plextor probably would have gone belly up anyway.
Too bad they did make good stuff, just wasn't much market penetration here.
www.storagereview.com/review/plextor-px-m3s-ssd-review
wow 2011/2012 24nm nand :)
Little baby is sleeping in an old Acer Aspire 5920G that is serving as a pretty caveman level of back up machine. The SSD would be an M5 Pro. I think they later renamed it or re-released it as the M5 Pro Xtreme. I still remember the day i bought it from ScanInternational in 2012/13 some time. That brushed aluminium chassis is still sexy as the day I unboxed her. I dont think any 2.5 SSD ever came even close to looking as good Crucial make a lot of their SSDs out of plastic and Samsung use a matte black paint on their drives if they arent made of plastic of course....
Not sure what happened at Lite-on or Plextor. Plextor just seemed to be here one moment then nowhere the next like they didnt even exist. Never attempt to compete at all. Saw massive wave of Samsungs and Crucials coming and bent over and just accepted what was coming.
I have heard them being in the OEM market for some time prior to the shutdown. When Dell/HP/IBM/Lenovo etc etc werent using Samsungs. They were using Lite-on drives... Or at least they did at one point in time.
The industry just got a whole lot smaller. And lonelier