Seagate Buying Maxtor

Oldwolf said:
What will happen to support for Maxtor products???

Or, is/will Maxtor be a subcompany to Seagate???

I have a Maxtor ATA133 card that I really love.
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From my understanding, Maxtor will still be supporting their products for a while. We're going to be shipping our current products, and our next gen products, but after that is up in the air. So there still should be a bit of continuation support for Maxtor products.

 
I assure you guys that talk about 5-year warranties and cache optimization that it means jack to Seagate. The retail segment is NOT where the cash is. SATA/PATA drives do not bring good margins, high-end server SCSI drives sold to OEMs and datacenter integrators is where the real cash is. That is how Seagate makes its money, of couse retail makes money, but it's nothing compared to SCSI market. This will essentially raise costs for us all in the long-run, you can count on that. You need to think in profit/operation terms not computer enthusiast details.
 
I would also expect Seagate to assume all of Maxtor's liabilities in addition to their assets, so they should uphold all of Maxtor's warranties. In addition, we will be well in to 2006 before this deal is finalized, Maxtor products are not going to disappear overnight.
 
Ultra Wide said:
I assure you guys that talk about 5-year warranties and cache optimization that it means jack to Seagate. The retail segment is NOT where the cash is. SATA/PATA drives do not bring good margins, high-end server SCSI drives sold to OEMs and datacenter integrators is where the real cash is. That is how Seagate makes its money, of couse retail makes money, but it's nothing compared to SCSI market. This will essentially raise costs for us all in the long-run, you can count on that. You need to think in profit/operation terms not computer enthusiast details.
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This is quite correct, ATA sales are extremely low margin. However, WD has obviously been able to make it without a SCSI line, as have Toshiba and Samsung.
 
Well, it was bound to happen. Gigabytes per $ are at a record low.... I got 2 120gb seagates last week for $80... total. They're not making the money they once were, 80 gigs is all a regular person will use. Hell, i'm a gamer and a nerd and yada yada, and i didn't even use my 80 gig up, just found a deal on new stuff.

Prices hitting rock bottom, someone's gotta make a move or they'll all dry up. Bad for the consumer on the price part more than likely, but only time will tell if it will REALLY be bad for the consumer...
 
I am thinking that whoever can bring decent solid-state storage to market will be the true winner in all the fray.
 
I am wondering if Seagate will phase out the Maxtor brand name or if they will keep selling hard drives under the Maxtor brand name...

I had no idea something like this was coming, fired up some HardOCP this morning and went WHOA WHOA WHOA. Pretty big news IMO. Hopefully it won't have a big effect on my comp. store -- we don't sell Maxtor, mostly WD and some Seagate. I'm sure a lot of stores are going to keep a very close eye on this.
 
I have mixed feeling about this. I really have not been having luck with maxtors drives as of late even though I know failure rates are pretty much the same accross the board. I could care less about the warranty period as I've seen too many refurb drives either come in doa or fail very fast. I just buy a new drive when I have one fail. O well time will tell.
 
I think its great. Or at least it can be great. For good competition there need only be two or three players making harddrives. I've been leaning heavily toward Samsung of late, and there are already far too many manufacturers in this area.

As long as it doesn't go the way of Linksys being acquired by Cisco. The quality did not really go down, but the price definitely spiked back up.
 
MPX said:
sad really sad:(
the project SAS will remain?
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both Maxtor and Seagate have functioning SAS products (indeed, i've been offered reseller kits by both companies) and i'd expect both to move forward with Seagate assimilating the Maxtor products under their enterprise line.

dave
 
I love Maxtors One Touch II external USB/Firewire external drives. Extremely fast, 16mb caches, and very quiet. Hopefully Seagate will be able to bring their externals to that level.
 
From actually reading the C|NET news.com article.

It says that Seagate will absorb Maxtor in and manufacture there drives at a lower price point.

Which I hope means the price of Maxtor drives go down more and the quality goes up.

But probably still have the same noisy drives.

So it looks like Seagate bought Maxtor to fill in the cheapo consumer level product line space.
 
JediFonger said:
15k rpm, 500GB w/16MB cache in raid0 array. 2.7TB usable space that's wicked fast is nothing to laught@.
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Until one drive dies.

And when bottlenecked by a PCI-32 slot.
 
The way I read the article is that Seagate thinks they can build a Maxtor quality product at a lower price point. So they'll probably keep the retail price the same while reducing manufacturing costs to make more of a profit off the Maxtor line.

I'm kind of impartial to the merger. I have owned 3 seagates, 2 Maxtors, 1 WD, and 1 Hitachi over a 8 year period and have not had any die yet. My only hope is that they keep the Maxtor prices low or lower or else it hurts us all.
 
This is one of those things were its just impossible to say yet wether its good or bad. From a competition point of view its bad. What used to be three top notch storage companies (Seagate, Maxtor, and Quantum) have now been rolled into one. I have a feeling Seagate will incorporate the best of both companies into one package regardless of what name they sell it under. How well they do so is to be seen.

NulloModo said:
Who knew the SCSI market was such a big deal... I always figured OEM PCs (Dell, HP, Compaq, Apple, all that) were where the big money was... I mean, look how many of those are sold vs. servers that need SCSI disks...

Then again, with the exhorbitant price of SCSI drives, I guess it makes some sense that they are big monkey makers...
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The SCSI market is a HUGE deal. The profit margin for SCSI is insane. The profit margin on IDE is squat. Some manufacturers probably even loose money on certain IDE lines. A lot of people don't understand that the enterprise level infrastructure everywhere relies 99.9% on SCSI. The amount of SCSI drives in arrays of many large companies can rival that of the drives on the user PC's. Thats why everytime I here the narrow minded comment that SCSI is nearing the end (they've been saying it for about 20 years) I roll my eyes and just laugh because they simply have no clue.
 
Over the 25 years I've been in the "computer biz" I have seen HardDrive manufacurers rise, fall, merge, split, change, evolve, and just about everyother term you can imagine. Although this type of thing is nothing new in this industry, it usually does come as a "didn't expect that" event.

First, there was IBM - they invented the hard drive as we know it and hold a majority of the patents on how they work, and they are still doing a lot of R&D in this area, but have sold thier manufacurting to Hitachi. Seagate has been a player in the drive business for as long as I can actually remember, from 8" floppy drives through today's gear.

Who remembers Shugart? Winchester anyone? Oh yah, there have been many companies out there over the years, some better than others.

With Seagate being a large coprorate player, and Maxtor just about owning the consumer segment - yes, they really do, just walk into CompUSA - 80% of the drives are Maxtor and the "CompUSA" brand are Maxtor drives - the combined technology and market share has the strong possiblitly of being good for all of us - the enterprise users, the enthusiasts, and even the consumer.

By having the combined mass of Seagate and Maxtor, this, in theory, should spur Western Digital, Samsung, Hitatchi, and Fujistsu to produce competitive products, which can only be good for us all. Let's hope the HD field doesn't narrow down to two players, that would be bad, very bad, for us.

Peace,
Tim
 
JediFonger said:
far as we know, neither company has raptor-like capabilities of 10k rpm sata drives aimed @enthusiasts/soho application.
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They both have the ability to do it. The raptor is quite literally a wolf in sheeps clothing. Its a lower end SCSI drive with an ATA interface. (FYI Western Digital used to be in the SCSI business but dropped out of it do to stiff competition). Thats why it has the same sizes as SCSI drives and much migher cost per GB than other ATA drives. Why they haven't done it probably has more to do with the rather limited market there is for it to bother. Its probably not profitable enough for them to even bother. For a company like WD with no SCSI line it certainly makes more sense to cater to this market.
 
MisterDNA said:
Until one drive dies.
...
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rofl0an.gif


Well fucking said. :p
 
I think that Seagate is basically going to slap their name on Maxtors consumer level drives and concentrate their own facilities on high end drives. Consumer level drives are the hardest area to make money from in the hard drive market. Maxtor was able to make cheap, fast drives and still (I assume) turn a profit. If Seagate keeps Maxtor's manufactoring formula intact and fires all of Maxtor's management, they will cut overhead and increase profit from Maxtor's drives. Seagate will increase its market share, have more stability with a greater number of drive lines, and will be taking over a company that is already working like a well oiled machine.


I don't think this will effect drive prices much at all, while there is one less company now; there are still more than enough to keep prices down. If there is a void made anywhere in the hard drive market by the buyout, some other company will come in and take over Maxtors place.
 
Ultra Wide said:
Hehe good old Conner harddrives... where they go? :(
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I remember a goofy old Conner drive from a super old AST that we had lying about here where I work. Weird-looking thing.

Now, who here has ever dealt with a Priam? I had a stack of them, came out of an MAI Basic Four about 20 years ago. Suckers were probably 20 lbs. a piece! Wonder what ever happened to Priam. How about Micropolis?
 
RamboZZo said:
They both have the ability to do it. The raptor is quite literally a wolf in sheeps clothing. Its a lower end SCSI drive with an ATA interface. (FYI Western Digital used to be in the SCSI business but dropped out of it do to stiff competition). Thats why it has the same sizes as SCSI drives and much migher cost per GB than other ATA drives. Why they haven't done it probably has more to do with the rather limited market there is for it to bother. Its probably not profitable enough for them to even bother. For a company like WD with no SCSI line it certainly makes more sense to cater to this market.
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First off, they didn't drop out, they failed. They only were in the enterprose market from 1995 - 2000. At the end they lost their biggest OEM accounts due to their newest drive not being qualified by compaq. Their enterprise division went out of business.

Secondly, it's really more of a rbid sheep in sheep's clothing than a wolf. It's still built like an ata drive, it just has a 10 k spindle speed and lower areal density to make this feasable. You want an ATA drive built like an enterprise, look at hitachi. They use the motor from their 10k products in their 500gb drive as well as many other source components.

Third, WD has no major OEMs for this product (which is where the money is) and it is entirely an enthusiast toy. None of the other big guys will play in that field for that reason alone. If WD was making a killing selling raptors, everyone else would make one too. What it does do for WD though is flagship and help to sell their 7200 rpm drives.
 
brom42 said:
I think that Seagate is basically going to slap their name on Maxtors consumer level drives and concentrate their own facilities on high end drives. Consumer level drives are the hardest area to make money from in the hard drive market. Maxtor was able to make cheap, fast drives and still (I assume) turn a profit. If Seagate keeps Maxtor's manufactoring formula intact and fires all of Maxtor's management, they will cut overhead and increase profit from Maxtor's drives. Seagate will increase its market share, have more stability with a greater number of drive lines, and will be taking over a company that is already working like a well oiled machine.


I don't think this will effect drive prices much at all, while there is one less company now; there are still more than enough to keep prices down. If there is a void made anywhere in the hard drive market by the buyout, some other company will come in and take over Maxtors place.
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Well, you won't see Seagate labels on Maxtor drives for a while. It's going to be months before everything actually takes place.

And no, Maxtor hasn't made any kind of significant profit in a long long time. That is one of the reasons we were bought, because we couldn't make money and were cheap.

I sure hope what you say happens - cut the management, keep the engineering teams. I'll at least keep my job then... but everything I've heard points to that not happening. Seagate is already fully staffed in engineering , therefore there is no reason to have redundancy.

Just my opinion from my perspective...


 
Dr.LaRd said:
you're buying a mass-produced product, that in most cases is spinning at 7200rpm the moment you turn your computer on. It's a product that isn't designed for 24/7/365 use.
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Really? I can't say I've had any issues with leaving drives on all the time. Care and feeding makes a big difference.

I guess (back on topic) what I'd like to see is Seagate just drop their product line entirely and start making Maxtors ;) What I think is more likely, though, is Seagate cans whoever was in charge of the seek and buffer policy for their drives over the last year or so and puts the Maxtor guy in charge. Not entirely a bad thing from my point of view; Seagate does have the highest densities around, and putting together a 500gb drive with Maxtor's seek performance and not five platters would be a cool thing to see.

 
Suprisingly enough, even according to Seagate none of the entry level drives (Barracudas) are rated for 24/7 use.

The cheapest drive that is rated for "light duty 24/7" is the NL35, 1 million MTBF (114 years)
 
I never have cared much for Maxtor because off their failure rate compared to other brands as well as their measly 1 year warranty on retail drives. I've always been more of a Seagate fan myself because of the low noise and top quality with the few that i've had.

Other then external hard drives i dont really have much personal dealing with 3.5" desktop drives any more though now that i've pretty much sold my soul to owning notebooks instead. Hitachi, Seagate, and Fujitsu are the three brands i've been likeing so far for 2.5".

I wonder what brand Staples will carry when Seagate takes over Maxtor? The new cheap Seagate drives? I wonder if they will carry the Seagate 5 year warranty or just the pitiful 1 year warranty.
 
Loss of competition is never a good thing for the consumer. On the surface, the buyout might seem beneficial as it will allow Seagate to saturate the consumer level market. But at what cost to the consumer?

I would imagine you'll see their OEM / Enterprise products retain 5 year warranty commitments. Their consumer level products will dip to 1-3 years warranty time. They'll sell whatever component from each company is the largest profit leader of the two. If they can manufacture their own drive cheaper than Maxtor did theirs in the same market segment, then guess which one wins.

Quality is only as good as the company that backs it up, and typically the consumer will suffer because of lack of competition.

This leaves Seagate and WD for the retail big box store components for the most part. Sure some places might sell Hitachi, but their market saturation is pitiful at best.

With that said, a hard drive, is a hard drive, is a hard drive IMO. Sure, specs can vary, and warranties can vary, but a bad drive is a bad drive, it doesn't matter who makes it. I had IBM's, WD's, Maxtor's, Conner, Seagate, all at one time or another, a drive dies prematurely. It just happens. Nothing in this world is perfect, so anyone throwing around complaints about "x company sells bad drives" is undoubtedly misinformed. Just because your bad experience is what it is, does not mean everyone will relate, we all understand that.

The key is going to be what this will do to / for the consumer. Don't expect good things.

On that note, I miss my old 4.3G UW SCSI Fujitsu, man, what a beast that sucker was, 5.25" of raw power :)

The only drive that is 100% assured, is a dead drive. Anything that is working today, might not work tomorrow, but a dead drive won't work tomorrow, so thats a guarantee.
 
I say it will be good for the consumer. As long as you have at least two separate manufactures engaged in honest competition, prices will drop as you increase efficiency due to larger scale production. In other words, it is much more efficient for Seagate to operate one giant ATA production facility, than for Maxtor and Seagate to operate separate facilities.
Even if they are still producing separate product lines, the ability to share certain aspects of the production process (enclosures, circuit boards, labor, etc… ) will result increased efficiency. Plus combined R&D staff, effort, and $$$ should benefit everyone. Perpendicular storage (Hitachi) sounds promising. Seagate should work hard if they want to keep their platter record.
What they do with the extra $$ is anyone’s guess. My bet (and hope) is that they use it to drop prices and try to beat out Western Digital, Samsung, Hitachi, and Fujistsu.

PRICE WAR!!!!!! :)

Side Note: I believe that this may be one reason the Intel/AMD and Nvidia/ATI situation exists in the CPU and Graphics card industries (which in my opinion has worked out well). After all, there is no way that 10 small companies could each develop and produce a product as complex as the Opteron or P4 for a reasonable price.
 
RamboZZo said:
This is one of those things were its just impossible to say yet wether its good or bad. From a competition point of view its bad. What used to be three top notch storage companies (Seagate, Maxtor, and Quantum) have now been rolled into one. I have a feeling Seagate will incorporate the best of both companies into one package regardless of what name they sell it under. How well they do so is to be seen.

The SCSI market is a HUGE deal. The profit margin for SCSI is insane. The profit margin on IDE is squat. Some manufacturers probably even loose money on certain IDE lines. A lot of people don't understand that the enterprise level infrastructure everywhere relies 99.9% on SCSI. The amount of SCSI drives in arrays of many large companies can rival that of the drives on the user PC's. Thats why everytime I here the narrow minded comment that SCSI is nearing the end (they've been saying it for about 20 years) I roll my eyes and just laugh because they simply have no clue.
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If the profit margin for SCSI is so high, then why doesn't Hitachi or Fujitsu or another competitor price more aggressively in their enterprise segments? Why cede half this market to Seagate with their 15% premium as it is? If the margins are high, then there is room for a competitor to make Seagate's premium look more like 30%, and grab some of those OEM contracts from Seagate, or force them to slash their prices. Looks like the enterprise market is fat, low-hanging fruit, and none of the players want to do anything that may change that.
 
poee said:
If the profit margin for SCSI is so high, then why doesn't Hitachi or Fujitsu or another competitor price more aggressively in their enterprise segments? Why cede half this market to Seagate with their 15% premium as it is? If the margins are high, then there is room for a competitor to make Seagate's premium look more like 30%, and grab some of those OEM contracts from Seagate, or force them to slash their prices. Looks like the enterprise market is fat, low-hanging fruit, and none of the players want to do anything that may change that.
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I wouldn't call it low hanging fruit. Yes, there is very high margin in that segment, but you have to remember that the time and effort to develop products that will be successful and reliable in those environments is much larger than that of a standard desktop drive. It's a lot harder to grab this "fruit" than it may seem. The real money maker is Fibre Channel, actually, which is a lot harder than even SCSI to develop and get working correctly.

And also, there is Seagate's reputation to deal with. In terms of the OEM's, they are THE manufacturer in the enterprise market. That is Seagate's bread and butter, and they count on that. It's tough to compete with that.

In my opinion, this is one of the reasons why Seagate may have bought us now, rather than a year ago or so. This year we gain a significant portion of the enterprise market, and were cutting directly into Seagate's bread and butter. Them buying us gets rid of their largest competitor in their bread and butter market as quickly as possible.
 
I just hope this acquisition doesn't in any way affect Seagate's quality and reliability. Maybe it's just my own experiences but that's what I know and trust them for.
 
All I can say is wow. Never saw that coming, kinda like the nVidia buying ULi deal. Whats with these coming-from-left-field purchases all of a sudden? Whats next? AMD buys Intel? :p
 
Well, though i still have both seagate and maxtor drives, in my htpc and fileserver, im not buying either of them again.

Seagates has that extremely annoying idle "STIR" (Seek to increase Reliability) noise, no good on a quiet evening enjoying some browsing, then that idle noise pops up occasionally, annoys me.

Maxtor are too loud and some of the models tends to run very hot.

Im using WD's for my main rig, and im gonna try out Hitachi for storage purposes.
 
I don't know. I've seen so many conflicting experiences here. The only Seagate I've ever had die was a 4.3GB SCSI drive. I use seagates in all my machines now, while never the fastest, they seem quite reliable. Apparently the one in my parents' computer (80gb 7200.7 SATA) has a minor SMART warning (nowhere near a fail) and the fitness is down to about 1/3rd. I guess I should replace that soon.
 
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