Seagate Finalizes the Acquisition of Samsung's Hard Drive Business

[Cristian_25H]

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.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[qubit]

Oh fantastic, first they kill the warranties and then reduce competition even further. No wonder they're pulling stunts like this.

 

[theJesus]

This makes me sad every time I hear about it. I've owned/used WD, Seagate, Hitachi, Samsung, and Toshiba (1.8") drives . . . and the Samsung drives were my favorite out of all of them.

 

[cdawall]

So now Seagate will own Samsung and Maxtor. As long as they steal some of the good things in the Samsung drives and combine them with the good things kept from Maxtor and Seagate I see no issues. As for warranties I have been buying refurbished drives for a while now so 1 year is all I got anyway.

 

[theJesus]

So now Seagate will own Samsung and Maxtor. As long as they steal some of the good things in the Samsung drives and combine them with the good things kept from Maxtor and Seagate I see no issues. As for warranties I have been buying refurbished drives for a while now so 1 year is all I got anyway.

That would be ideal, but the problem I'm concerned about, and I'm sure others are as well, is the reduced competition. If I recall, WD bought, or is in the process of buying, Hitachi's HDD division, so that just leaves us with WD and Seagate to compete against each other. And I wouldn't be surprised if they try to fix prices instead of actually competing.

 

[repman244]

If I recall, WD bought, or is in the process of buying, Hitachi's HDD division, so that just leaves us with WD and Seagate to compete against each other. And I wouldn't be surprised if they try to fix prices instead of actually competing.

Yes WD bought Hitachi.

I agree with you about the price fixing, there is no competition left. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole warranty thing is because of lack of competition :shadedshu.

 

[qwerty_lesh]

"It is an exciting time in the industry" for him maybe... the jerk, making a killing off of these 'shortages'

 

[buggalugs]

So I guess we will see Seagate SSD's using Samsung technology? Could be a good move for Seagate. Without access to a big NAND supplier, seagate will slowly lose business to SSD's

 

[Mussels]

i havent bought a single HDD since samsung got bought out, samsung were best by a mile.

 

[theJesus]

i havent bought a single HDD since samsung got bought out, samsung were best by a mile.

I agree 100%.

 

[qubit]

i havent bought a single HDD since samsung got bought out, samsung were best by a mile.

Yeah, I remember reading a Samsung review years ago and they were described as the dark horse of hard discs, since they were so good, but so underrated.

I had a Samsung 8GB drive from 1999 that was incredibly reliable - even more so given the number of times I'd dropped it and knocked it while it was running. Never had a single error from it. Awesome drive. It was the SV844A.

 

[theJesus]

Yeah, I remember reading a Samsung review years ago and they were described as the dark horse of hard discs, since they were so good, but so underrated.

I had a Samsung 8GB drive from 1999 that was incredibly reliable - even more so given the number of times I'd dropped it and knocked it while it was running. Never had a single error from it. Awesome drive. It was the SV844A.

I just googled that model number and all the results were for some sort of makeup

 

[cdawall]

That would be ideal, but the problem I'm concerned about, and I'm sure others are as well, is the reduced competition. If I recall, WD bought, or is in the process of buying, Hitachi's HDD division, so that just leaves us with WD and Seagate to compete against each other. And I wouldn't be surprised if they try to fix prices instead of actually competing.

Toshiba is still out there. My wife has a 2.5" 250GB in her laptop from them. Nothing special about their drives though. There are just as many HDD as CPU or GPU companies. Two big guns and a little guy. There is still going to be a form of competition, but like has been said probably not to the extent we are used too.

 

[theJesus]

Toshiba is still out there. My wife has a 2.5" 250GB in her laptop from them. Nothing special about their drives though. There are just as many HDD as CPU or GPU companies. Two big guns and a little guy. There is still going to be a form of competition, but like has been said probably not to the extent we are used too.

Toshiba doesn't really make many desktop drives do they? I know they pretty much own the 1.8" market though.

 

[cdawall]

Toshiba doesn't really make many desktop drives do they? I know they pretty much own the 1.8" market though.

I have not seen one personally since I found a 40GB in my garage.

 

[HeaveNAkirA]

I have 3 SG hdds 2x1TB 7200.12 and 1x320GB 7200.7
After 7200.7 all Seagate disk are cr*p my 2x1TB disks get 9% health on SMART with around 1600 bad sectors. I also have few Samsung disks 1TB and 2TB and all i can say is amazing silent, reliable and very fast and that is not all, the price is lowest among the competition!

 

[punani]

Nooo! hope they don't mess with the samsung design!!

My samsung drive has worked flawlessly. Bought a seagate external maybe a year back, died after 3 weeks, got angry, went to the seagate forums, lots of people with the same problem and no support... returned the drive and got me a Lacie neil poulton external after that. The Lacie drive has had a few "clicks of death", but does anyone know if Lacie manufactures their own drives or is it samsung/seagate/WD inside the external box ??

 

[Mussels]

Nooo! hope they don't mess with the samsung design!!

My samsung drive has worked flawlessly. Bought a seagate external maybe a year back, died after 3 weeks, got angry, went to the seagate forums, lots of people with the same problem and no support... returned the drive and got me a Lacie neil poulton external after that. The Lacie drive has had a few "clicks of death", but does anyone know if Lacie manufactures their own drives or is it samsung/seagate/WD inside the external box ??

lacie wouldnt even make the box. someone elses drive and controller.

 

[punani]

lacie wouldnt even make the box. someone elses drive and controller.

Spent some time googling this with no luck, any idea whos drives/controller they use ( my spidersense says seagate .. ) ?

 

[jsfitz54]

I have a Lacie 2.5 external RIKI that uses a Samsung 640GB drive.

 

[riffraffy]

evil empire

I see it now the Seasam Spincuda.

 

[Major_A]

This makes me sad every time I hear about it. I've owned/used WD, Seagate, Hitachi, Samsung, and Toshiba (1.8") drives . . . and the Samsung drives were my favorite out of all of them.

Same here. For whatever reason I've noticed Samsung drives run cooler and are a lot less noisy than the others too. For those reasons I've only ran Samsung drives in my personal machines for the last 5 years.

Out of Seagate and WD I'd rather pickup a Seagate drive. Now that they have Samsung's HDD IP I hope they actually use it.

 

[v12dock]

Nothing can touch the F3 Why must there be bad news... : (

 

[theJesus]

Same here. For whatever reason I've noticed Samsung drives run cooler and are a lot less noisy than the others too. For those reasons I've only ran Samsung drives in my personal machines for the last 5 years.

Yeah, my two Samsung drives are constantly <20c and I've never heard a peep out of them. Granted they're 5900 RPM, but I don't notice any difference in speed.

 

[w3b]

Samsung HDDs will be sorely missed, I was looking forward to seeing their 1TB per platter models (tech Seagate are now using in their latest series of HDDs) :shadedshu