[Thinkpad] Hitachi drive difference?

Tue Apr 10 15:05:27 CDT 2007

IBM hrd drives were sold to Hitachi about 7 years ago. Fujitsu has never
been very large. Toshiba has been large, and good... for 15+ years.
Divisions of Toshiba appear to be in big trouble. They no longer have
control over all their laptop manufacturing divisions. I would nto be
surprised to see them  assimilated by Samsung, LG, Hitachi, or Seagate.
Maxtor, to my knowledge, has never been big in laptop hard drives except
when they bought up various companies which had been marketing them... then
they sold off that part of the business. Maxtor bought Connor and Quantum,
and is now owned by Seagate.
Samsung has been mfg laptop drives for at least 6 years, but only in the
previous 18 months have they been competitive in quality and reliability.
They have been very agressive since that time.
Seagate has been making laptop drives for 8+ years, but have been making a
much stronger purchase as they have bought up a number of other hard drive
manufacturers.  We have been buying Seagate laptop drives in volume for four
years.
Western Digital has been a prime manufacturer of laptop hard drives since
1997, but made the big push in 2001, and is now in third place behind
Toshiba and Seagate.
Hitachi has had some major manufacturing difficulties that created
difficulties with their client base... during which they have lost market
share, and leadership in technology..
Samsung's hard drive division is currently the most rapidly growing
manufacturer of laptop drives. Seagate is the leader in technology with
their "perpendicular" drives. But both Forbes and Business Week have
predicted severe cuts in sales and profitability for both Seagate, Western
Digital, and Hitachi.  We can expect some major changes soon as the
financial markets are starting to chew them up.  A lot depends on how well
Seagate can control size, speed, and reliability.
Nearly all laptops, regardless of brand, and model, are manufactured by only
seven companies... They control the destiny of all hard drive folks. The
money folks are climbing on top of the pile to see where the money is and
which way the technology is moving.

RayBay

On 4/10/07, Paul Khoury <khourypa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 4/9/07, Jonathan Berry <jberry at islandnet.com> wrote:
> > Just to add to the confusion of drives that work well for their
> > owners, I have two Samsung 80 GB (different model numbers, I
> > think), 5400 rpm, 8MB cache, one in a 600X and one in an X32.
> > Both quiet, vibration-free and of course the sample size is
> > statistically irrelevant for breakdowns.  One is about 1 year
> > old, the other about 2 years old.
> >
> Is Samsung relatively new to the foray of notebook drives?  I know the
> long
> time manufacturers are Toshiba, IBM, Hitachi, and Fujitsu, but up until
> 3 years ago, have NEVER seen a Samsung, and even rarer still were
> Seagate, Maxtor, and WD.
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Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

                                    Cicero  43 BC