Seagate Buying Maxtor

[DougLite]

The overriding thing to remember here is that the DiamondMax8 Slimline disaster has finally caught up to Maxtor, just like the 60GXP caught up with IBM. I've said it before, and I'll say it again here: The rope is too tight for any of the makers to make a bad drive. Make a bad drive, and you will go out of business

Seagate might be able to afford one dud. Hitachi GST, Fujitsu, and Samsung are all backed by Korean/Japanese conglomerates, so they can be bailed out if they fall flat. WD can't. WD is in an extremely precarious position, they always have been. If they screw up once, they're toast. If I had to guess which HDD makers is going to go out next, I'd have to pick WD.

 

[xrdotimcr]

I've never had a problem with WD drives, never.
I've had this 60 gig seagate for 4 years, not one problem.
I've had this Maxtor for 1 year, many problems.
Hopefully Seagate can help.

 

[pfc_m_drake]

WD is in an extremely precarious position, they always have been. If they screw up once, they're toast. If I had to guess which HDD makers is going to go out next, I'd have to pick WD.

Although I understand what you're saying, hopefully it doesn't play out that way, because that would be too bad

 

[JediFonger]

i know it's an uncertainty when HDs die, but isn't part of the reason HDs die power? i think if the end user has a decent UPS&PSU, their HDs should be OK. power is one of the big reasons electronics components die. it's sad to see so many city/suburban areas with frequent brown/black outs/low voltage. that bodes badly for many electronics.

 

[Dark Ember]

The overriding thing to remember here is that the DiamondMax8 Slimline disaster has finally caught up to Maxtor, just like the 60GXP caught up with IBM. I've said it before, and I'll say it again here: The rope is too tight for any of the makers to make a bad drive. Make a bad drive, and you will go out of business

Seagate might be able to afford one dud. Hitachi GST, Fujitsu, and Samsung are all backed by Korean/Japanese conglomerates, so they can be bailed out if they fall flat. WD can't. WD is in an extremely precarious position, they always have been. If they screw up once, they're toast. If I had to guess which HDD makers is going to go out next, I'd have to pick WD.

I think that was partially it, but not entirely. Yes, the DM8 debacle hurt us big time, but it was recoverable. The problem stems from our previous management's decisions about what to put into upcoming products. In our 500GB drive that is supposed to be out already, they tried to cram too many features into it at once, and it just wasn't possible to get everything working right and get the time to market. If we could have executed better with that drive, we could have been alright and pulled ourselves out. But there was just too much work to be done to get the drive out in a reasonable amount of time. We would have had high margins and decent volume with it, which would have made us a good bit of money. That is what our current management was banking on. I think when they saw that the effort was a lost cause, they went to "plan B" of selling us off.

 

[DougLite]

That's kind of a misnomer in my mind, because 500GB drives simply don't make sense right now. You can run two 250GB drives for $100 less, and more flexibility/redundancy. At least in my judgment, 500GB drives only make sense right now (and for the next six months to a year) in applications where physical space is at a premium. It's a shame in my mind that the race to a largely meaningless (at present) capacity point killed a perfectly good HDD maker.

 

[Dark Ember]

That's kind of a misnomer in my mind, because 500GB drives simply don't make sense right now. You can run two 250GB drives for $100 less, and more flexibility/redundancy. At least in my judgment, 500GB drives only make sense right now (and for the next six months to a year) in applications where physical space is at a premium. It's a shame in my mind that the race to a largely meaningless (at present) capacity point killed a perfectly good HDD maker.

In terms of the high volume markets, I completely agree. But the nearline segments were drooling over 500GB. EMC, NetApp, and those kinds of OEMs really wanted that drive - they liked it far more than the Hitachi or Seagate ones when we actually got them to work.

The capacity point itself isn't really what doomed the product, it was the 35 new major features put into it. Also, the drive was a complete redesign from the ground up - something that hadn't been done before either. Usually we're leveraging some other previous drive, but not this one. Poor planning...

 

[draksia]

In terms of the high volume markets, I completely agree. But the nearline segments were drooling over 500GB. EMC, NetApp, and those kinds of OEMs really wanted that drive - they liked it far more than the Hitachi or Seagate ones when we actually got them to work.

I agree with Dark Ember we are getting hounded at work to make 500gb drives approved for out 2U 12 drive box. People really want 6TB 2U systems.

 

[unhappy_mage]

I agree with Dark Ember we are getting hounded at work to make 500gb drives approved for out 2U 12 drive box. People really want 6TB 2U systems.

can't blame them!

Dark Ember: What 35 new features were added? That does seem like quite a demanding load from the engineering side.

 

[Dark Ember]

can't blame them!

Dark Ember: What 35 new features were added? That does seem like quite a demanding load from the engineering side.

Yeah, about 35 new MAJOR features. There were way more minor ones. Most of the successful programs have like 10-13 major features, and the product isn't designed from the ground up.

I'm really not sure I'm at liberty to say what all of them are because a lot are an internal type of thing. I'll figure out what I CAN say, and maybe put together a list or something, if you're interested.

 

[JediFonger]

yeah, i'd like to know as well. aren't those "new features" really still unofficially approved SATA "2.0" specs?

can't blame them!

Dark Ember: What 35 new features were added? That does seem like quite a demanding load from the engineering side.

 

[Yoshiyuki Blade]

Hm.... I had an ancient 3.2 GB Seagate HD in my IBM Aptiva back in '95, and that was the only Seagate HD I owned. I've been buying nohting but WD lately, but once I got a 200GB Maxtor. It slowly died on me, and I managed to save my data before it was rendered unusable. After an RMA, they sent a refurbished one that soon died by the clicks of death. Luckily I still had like 99% of my data backed up, and I didn't think I lost too much. That was about 2 years ago, and just recently I read up on that freezer trick and tried it out. Amazingly it worked, and I managed to save some digital pictures that I took some time ago. I was so happy to retrieve what I thought was lost forever! This was just about the only valuable things that was left in there, so I just let it die again, and now it's sitting in a box. I'm not gonna bother with RMAs anymore...

Anyway, that's my experience with Maxtor... This is pretty shocking news since I figured they were pretty big, and I just had a couple duds, but luckily its not going to affect me very much.

 

[RamboZZo]

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.

I don't think its as simple as simple as it looks from the outside. Selling at a lower cost alone will not get you into a better position in that market. Drive manufacturers have contracts to test, certify, and cuztomize their drives by firmware/electronics to work flawlessly with the equipment it will be used in. That is really what makes the difference there. To be quite honest I doubt price is even that big of an issue here. A relatively small price increase is still pocket change in the industries this stuff is targeted at.

 

[burningrave101]

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?

If anything it would be Intel buying AMD. In the budget spectrum Intel is a large corporation and AMD is a small home business owner .

 

[burningrave101]

That's kind of a misnomer in my mind, because 500GB drives simply don't make sense right now. You can run two 250GB drives for $100 less, and more flexibility/redundancy. At least in my judgment, 500GB drives only make sense right now (and for the next six months to a year) in applications where physical space is at a premium. It's a shame in my mind that the race to a largely meaningless (at present) capacity point killed a perfectly good HDD maker.

I definitely agree. There is a small niche market for 500GB drives but the majority of drives sold are all in the lower 80-250GB range. I would personally much rather have two 250GB drives then a 500GB drive because of the better flexibility and redundancy like you said.

A 500GB drive would have the performance advantage over a 250GB drive though because of having twice the arial density. Around an 8 gig partition for the OS on a 250GB drive would be roughly 3.2% of the fastest portion of the drive whereas on a 500 gig drive it would be the fastest 1.6%.

 

[Dark Ember]

yeah, i'd like to know as well. aren't those "new features" really still unofficially approved SATA "2.0" specs?

No, those are mostly the "minor" features I was referring to. Some of the SATA2 stuff is major, but that only accounts for a few of those that went into the drive.