Legendary PC Storage Brand Plextor to Shut Down

[AleksandarK]

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.



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[Ferrum Master]

An article failing to tell what's what. They are first known for making CD/DVD drives including Lite-On, as transforming companies, as nobody needs CD/DVD medium anymore, failed to get into the train. The whole SSD story is just the end.

 

[Hyderz]

i dont think i have ever used plextor myself personally

 

[Melvis]

That is a shame! I found Plextor when they made the 2.5" SSD's one of the best and more advanced then others and I love my 250GB Plextor SSD its been perfect since day 1 and I wish they kept going over here in AUS....oh well.

 

[R0H1T]

Legendary, since when?

I love my 250GB Plextor SSD its been perfect since day 1 and I wish they kept going

I think I have their OEM version from Liteon, pretty great drive 10 years down the line!

 

[Dichy]

Sad day for me, I know Plextor since they were making SCSI CD Burner, I was too young to be able to buy one but later I had many of their products, PATA and SATA CD/DVD Burners.
Good luck to all the employees.

 

[enb141]

Sad day for me, I know Plextor since they were making SCSI CD Burner, I was too young to be able to buy one but later I had many of their products, PATA and SATA CD/DVD Burners.
Good luck to all the employees.

High Quality, depends, on their DVD/CD were good, but anything else were not.

And the reason of its death is because CD/DVD even Blu rays are being phase out.

 

[Onasi]

Rest in pepperoni Plextor, you will be missed. Your SATA SSDs were unironically great and some of the best quality and value at the time. Too bad you could not cut it in the new NVME realities.
Decent disk drives too, to be honest, still have some of them kicking around in older workstations at my job.

 

[KrazyT]

Still have some Plextor drive somewhere ...
I bet they're still working !

 

[delshay]

And the reason of its death is because CD/DVD even Blu rays are being phase out.

That means my collection of CD/DVD/Blu-ray will be worth a lot more in the years to come. As far as I understand it, when something is no longer made & start to become more rare price shoot's up.

 

[meatwar]

Sad but that's nothing new in this area of technology and in the world as we know, they had the best SCSI/IDE Burner drives, was the best around as my choice along the Pioneer Slot-in drives as source drives.

 

[enb141]

That means my collection of CD/DVD/Blu-ray will be worth a lot more in the years to come. As far as I understand it, when something is no longer made & start to become more rare price shoot's up.

That only works if you have sealed unopened CD / DVD / Blu rays, which I doubt.

 

[delshay]

That only works if you have sealed unopened CD / DVD / Blu rays, which I doubt.

OK. ..But I do hold all my disc by the edge. So even thou they are many years old, there's not a single scratch/fingerprint on them. That's got to be worth something in future years.

 

[K²mix]

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.

As far as I remember. Plextor M10P were among the first PCIe 4.0 drives to use the new Innogrit Rainier controller at that time.

Kioxia has thrown another big brand name in the garbage can.

 

[Chrispy_]

Legendary? In the 1990s they were one of the leading CD drive manufacturers. IIRC they had the fastest writer on the market briefly but were soon overtaken by the Korean giants (LG and Samsung)

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...

 

[TheDeeGee]

I only know them from CD/DVD drives back in the day, used to have a DVD drive from them.

Thought they went belly up long ago.

 

[Chrispy_]

Thought they went belly up long ago.

They actually did exit the PC market in 2010. All Plextor stuff since then (even early SATA SSDs) was just Lite-On with a new label.

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.

 

[bug]

High Quality, depends, on their DVD/CD were good, but anything else were not.

And the reason of its death is because CD/DVD even Blu rays are being phase out.

At first, Plextor was the CD-ROM drive to have, LiteOn was on the "avoid" list. LiteOn gradually improved, they were great in the DVD era. But then the world moved on.

 

[enb141]

OK. ..But I do hold all my disc by the edge. So even thou they are many years old, there's not a single scratch/fingerprint on them. That's got to be worth something in future years.

Worth something yes, but how worth is gonna be very very low.

At first, Plextor was the CD-ROM drive to have, LiteOn was on the "avoid" list. LiteOn gradually improved, they were great in the DVD era. But then the world moved on.

Yeah Plextor was the CD-ROM drive to have, but later on as other have mentioned here, they moved to Lite On (correct me if I'm wrong)

 

[Zareek]

I can't believe how many people are bashing Plextor. They are legendary for their CD burners, IMO. They were the best and everyone knew it back then.

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.

 

[TheDeeGee]

At first, Plextor was the CD-ROM drive to have, LiteOn was on the "avoid" list. LiteOn gradually improved, they were great in the DVD era. But then the world moved on.

I also remember having a Pioneer drive without a tray, it was a CD drive you see in cards.

 

[mechtech]

I used to have a plextor M3S 256GB ssd, way back when they were still kind of new, this I paid around $300 for it. It's still working good in my buddies brother's pc to this day.

Too bad they did make good stuff, just wasn't much market penetration here.

Plextor PX-M3S SSD Review

Like their recent M2P SSD, the Plextor PX-M3S uses a Marvell 9174 processor, however…

www.storagereview.com

wow 2011/2012 24nm nand

 

[bobbybluz]

20 years ago Plextor was THE optical drive to have. Along with excellent drives their PlexTools Professional software suite was a must as well. It was so good no competitor even offered anything like it as far as I know. I still have two fully functional Plextor DVD burners in my "museum piece" rig that's stashed away; a PX-708A (I think that was the last unit actually manufactured by Plextor) and a PX-716A (The first actually made by Lite-On?). Remember this was back in the PATA days when those drives cost $200-300. I also still have a couple of SATA PX-880A/890A's in working PC's but they're slowly dying. Those are also just rebadged Lite-On's. Another once top of the line brand name is now a causality of time, technology and possible bad management. R.I.P.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Real sad. I read this last night and remember I had one if their drives around somewhere but couldnt remember where. Had a good dig around this afternoon.

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

 

[Z-GT1000]

Plextor, Liteon, Soltek, Epox, Abit, Aopen, Leadtek...is sad when all this great old days companys have the same end