The Hard Business of Selling Hard Drive Platters

redfieldp writes: "This is a pretty interesting story about the 'last' HD manufacturer in the U.S., and reasons why the industry is ailing ..." There's quite a bit of interesting hard-drive history in here, too.

Comments

jesus did I really need to say it?

[carpe_noctem]

This is a pretty interesting story about http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/01/technology/01KOM A.html>the 'last' HD manufacturer in the U.S., and reasons why the industry is ailing ...

double check those URLs and HTML tags!

I tell you, nobody takes any pride in their work anymore :/

My speculation...

[Ziviyr]

there has been industry speculation that Millipede is the secret advantage that led I.B.M. to decide to sell its disk-drive business to Hitachi.

I speculate it might have been due to IBM's hideous failure to manufacturing stable drives that cause them to sell out. 60% failure rate here, and thats not the floor of it!

US Manufacturing

[Citizen of Earth]

'last' HD manufacturer in the U.S., and reasons why the industry is ailing

Because American workers are over-paid and the "strong" US dollar makes imports cheaper?

Re:US Manufacturing

[OneFix]

I wish this were the case, but it is generally not that American workers are over-paid, but the workers in other countries are under-paid (read exploited).

Just look at what happens...when was the last time you heard about the cheap imports from France...how about the UK...what about Germany...or Canada...or even Japan (most of the cheap electronics are made in countries like Korea and Hong Kong).

No...the truth is, it's just cheaper to buy a worker in developing/under-developed countries.

But, in the long run, it helps drive down the cost of an American worker which makes every country's workers suffer.

...Now, don't get me wrong, there are overpaid American workers, but there are also overpaid workers in most every industry and in most every developed country.

Re:US Manufacturing

[Citizen of Earth]

I wish this were the case, but it is generally not that American workers are over-paid, but the workers in other countries are under-paid (read exploited).

The economics of this sort of thing are all relative. If I lived in a third-world country and made one-tenth of my present salary, effectively I would be wealthy beyond all belief. Yeah, I'd sure be exploited!

Just look at what happens...when was the last time you heard about the cheap imports from France...how about the UK...what about Germany...or Canada

Cheap is a relative term, but costs are significantly lower for manufacturers in Canada, for instance. That is why so many American cars are made in Canada. Canadian workers are paid relatively less (or, as I said before, American workers are over-paid), and the 'artifically' low currency-exchange rate makes importing much more sensible than manufacturing in the US. You also get an educated and skilled workforce as good as or better than in the US. OTOH, the US is a big market with a big appetite for imports. Common business sense says to move cost centers (manufacturing/production) to Canada (or various other countries) and profit centers (sales) to America.

No...the truth is, it's just cheaper to buy a worker in developing/under-developed countries.

Well yeah. In a system of global economics, each country has different circumstances and can offer different comparative advantages. Third-world countries sometimes have raw natural resources to trade, but they always have cheap labour to offer.

But really, one needs to question the notion that these workers are 'exploited', given that the 'exploitation' happens on a voluntary basis. The only conclusion is that the 'exploitation' (by first-world standards) is significantly better than the alternative, presumably subsistance farming, begging, or starving to death. The anti-globalization protesters never seem to grapple with this issue. [A prosperous nation doesn't just appear overnight, and international welfare will never create one. Prosperity is the result of a long bootstrapping process that only possible under a responsible government.]

But, in the long run, it helps drive down the cost of an American worker which makes every country's workers suffer.

Bullshit. In the long run, the economics balance out to where workers are compensated in proportion to their skills and relative worth. Everybody wins in this circumstance. Perhaps American workers will ultimately stop being over-paid, but the rest of the world won't suffer because of this. With greater economic efficiency, the global standard of living increases.

but there are also overpaid workers in most every industry and in most every developed country

That's pretty much a tautology. For various political and fixed forces, some workers are paid more than they are worth, because the free market has been retarded from functioning properly.

Cyclical

[Em Emalb]

It's just a cycle, like everything else. Hard-drives pretty much outstripped (for most people) the amount of stuff they actually store. Another thing rarely mentioned is that most people are content with what they have, not because they wouldn't like a larger hard-drive, but because it is unnecessary, and things deemed unnecessary are often the first to go when money gets tight.

On the other hand, I know of one insurance company that puts all claims and paperwork in digital form in about 4 different places. This enables them to move the paper work off site and also requires them to get the largest, most top of the line hdd's they can find. Every month or so, they are bringing a new system online with bigger, better, faster.TM So, failing harddrive companies, concentrate on the businesses, not Mom and Dad with their 12GB they wont fill up, until software bloat causes them to.

Uses for this much storage

[peterdaly]

I agree that storage size has vastly outpaced demand. We have a 2 terabyte chunk of platters attached to a server which will probably triple in the next year or so, but that is not the norm.

Our "large" database servers (10's of millions of records) have more storage than they know what to with. We are currently big on 18.X gig drives at 15k rpm just beacuse we want the spindles to speed up performance. I'd rather have a 12 or 14 drive cage full of fast 18 giger ebay specials than 73 or even 36 gig drives and have a rockin price/performance ratio.

I find myself formatting drives for application servers feeling guilty that I am making partitions so big I know will never be more than a quarter full. We have web servers with less than 4 gig of space used serving about a million hits a month. Why do would we be keeping the demand up for the large drives? This drives the demand, and therefore the price and margin of the high end drives down.

The drive sizes are just growing so fast most users don't need to upgrade. It is not helped by the fact that the upgrade cycle for PC's has slowed down so much. We are replacing PC's at customers sites because the contract says it is time to replace, even though the PC is already more than powerful enough for the job they perform. How many business users really need more than a 450Mhz box on their desk? We are putting 2ghz machines on these desks now. These people run terminal emulation software, browse the web, and type.

There are many factors contributing to this hard drive problem the article talks about, these are just some personal examples I have of the reason give for the slump.

-Pete

Re:Why the HDD business is ailing...

[essdodson]

We're soon approaching critical mass. The point at which everyone who wants a computer has one. Sales will drop off sharply as only those who require the top of the line buy new computers and those who don't require top of the line buy those discarded machines second hand.

Ability to store, outstrips ability to back up

[zerofoo]

Demand for storage will not increase until backup methods can scale up.

What good is that 120 GB hard drive in your machine if you can only backup 40-60 GB?

Disk storage has been really cheap for years, yet backup systems like tape and DVD are either too small or too damn expensive.

Anybody check out prices on DDS4, AIT, and other tape drives....way too expensive.

Our ability to store stuff is not dictated by hard drive space, it is dictated by backup space.

-ted