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IBM Bails Out of the Hard Drive Market

Posted by timothy on from the spinning-down dept.

DJ STORM writes: "IBM has decided to exit the hard drive market citing the market has become too competitive.They plan to sell 70% of the their HD business to Hitachi. The new company name is unknown. One has to wonder if this has anything to do with IBM's troubled Deskstar GXP series." IBM will still have part ownership of the resulting venture, but it sounds like no more Deskstars. Update: 04/17 16:33 GMT by T : You may also find interesting some older posts about IBM's work on increasing hard drive storage (1, 2, 3); hopefully, the new company will continue that R&D effort.

4 of 344 comments (clear)

  1. The Register has also an article... by u01000101 · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... about this, at http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/53/24896.html which also details the preliminary agreement between IBM and Hitachi.

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  2. Corrections ... by ProfMoriarty · · Score: 5, Informative
    They plan to sell 70% of the their HD business to Hitachi.

    Uhmmm .. this isn't exactly correct. From the article ...

    Separately, IBM and Hitachi also said they plan to combine their various hard-disk drive operations into a new, stand-alone joint venture. Hitachi would own 70 percent of the joint venture and pay IBM for its hard drive assets, subject to the completion of negotiations, the companies said.

    It would appear that the headline is more correct than the story, IBM is out, but own a 30% stake in the new company ... this is not the same as selling 70% to Hitachi ...

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  3. Merger, not sale! by rkgmd · · Score: 5, Informative

    IBM and Hitachi are *merging* their disk business so that IBM gets a 30% stake (and Hitachi, 70%). The story's comment "They plan to sell 70% of the their HD business to Hitachi." seems incorrect to me; IBM is simply estimating that its current disk business is worth 30% of the joint disk business. Also, note that Hitachi has a very strong storage systems business HDS (right behind EMC) that is very profitable (also resold by SUN as Storedge9900 series datacenter/enterprise storage products, I believe), so big blue may have merged their disk business with a view to ensuring future profitability in the overall storage space.

  4. Re:So who makes "good" hard drives? by slaker · · Score: 5, Informative

    The consensus on storagereview.com is that the best all-round drives at the moment are being made by Maxtor and Western Digital. Maxtor, in particular, hasn't had a troublesome drive model in quite some time, and has an excellent service orientation, including a no-hassle RMA service.

    Reliability is found in the mid-range 10,000rpm SCSI drives like the Atlas III and in the low-end 5400rpm models, particularly those from Samsung and to a lesser extent Seagate and Maxtor. SCSI drives *do* have longer warranties, if that says anything. In 7200rpm, probably Maxtor or Seagate's offerings.

    Quiet: IDE, the choice is just about any 5400rpm drive, or Seagate's Barracuda IV for 7200rpm. Fujitsu's MAN-series SCSI disks are as close as you'll get to quiet, there.

    Fast: IDE, 5400rpm: Western Digital's WD800AB. 7200rpm: Either Maxtor's 740X (8.5ms seek) or the Western Digital WD1200JB (transfer rates through the roof).
    SCSI: Maxtor's Atlas III for 10,000rpm or Seagate's X15-36LP among the 15krpm units.

    Is that what you want to know?

    Find out more at www.storageforum.net or www.storagereview.com. We're really very helpful people. :)

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