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Samsung HD Unit Bought By Seagate
nanoflower followed up on a recent story about the unpredictable future of data storage. That story talked about Western Digital buying Hitachi, leaving just 4 players. Now:
"Yet another hard drive company is going by the wayside, as Seagate is buying the Samsung HDD unit. Seagate is buying the unit for $1.375 billion (half in stock, half in cash)."
I've actually been a fan of my Samsung hard drives. So far they've outlasted every other drive manufacturer I've tried. Now I know that technically they all usually have roughly similar failure rates, but at least from personal experience right about every Samsung product of any kind I've bought I've always gotten great service on and great reliability from, something important for me with hard drives.
Seagate? Not so much. Well, guess it doesn't matter now as like it or not that's who we're getting. Still, I can't imagine a shrinking consumer drive market is very good for the consumer.
"Just a fox, a whisper."
Nobody expects a Seagate acquisition!
God please no.
Back in 2008, Seagate was already fitting its FreeAgent Go 500GB USB HDD with Samsung hard drives: http://forum.notebookreview.com/hardware-components-aftermarket-upgrades/301553-seagate-freeagent-go-500gb-disassembly-samsung-hd-upgrade-laptop.html
With more exclusive partnerships and more efficient organization, maybe we'll see costs come down on some of their notebooks/ssd's.
"Exclusive partnerships" always send up a monopoly warning flag for me. That usually means higher profits for producers, and higher costs for the end user.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
What is the point of buying out competitors, when their products are not even in the same ballpark of quality?
Because people are paid bonuses, and bonuses are based on short term gains.
This applies to modern capitalism in general.
Oh god, please no. I have had nothing but horrible experiences with Seagate drives recently under linux:
I don't get it. Seagate used to be great - WHY did they engineer drives to not work properly under linux? The idea of an HDD that doesn't work under linux is just wrong - like you have to actually try to make something that crappy.
I ended up just replacing the still under warranty Seagate drives with Western Digitals. Problems since then? Zero. LEAVE WESTERN DIGITAL ALONE!
PS: I must be dumb. Slashdot is not styling my bulletted list properly.
Seagate and Samsung are my favourite two drive manufacturers at the moment... I'd have preferred they remain separate.
If I'm thinking about my data, I want - above all - for it to be reliably stored. With the best will in the world, eventually every drive fails... So... I tend to buy different makes of drives in pairs - from different suppliers... the logic is that it is far less likely that both drives will fail simultaneously - leaving my raid-1 data intact.
If Seagate and Samsung share manufacturing/storage/distribution, then the independence of Seagate and Samsung drives vanishes... forcing me to go to another less-preferred vendor.
I wonder when these consolidations will stop being a good idea? I definitely hope that it will be possible to buy independently manufactured drives in future.
after the mail in rebate ?
"It's one thing to talk about the poetry of machines. Quite another to listen to it for yourself."
Not just Linux! I've had 50% failure rate (3 of 6 over the last 18 months) on Seagate 3.5" 1tb drives in a RAID enclosure connected to my Mac. I'll also note the continuing problems with the Momentus XT 2.5" hybrid drives; apparently the drive is optimized for Windows and works poorly at best (or fails more frequently) under Linux or Mac OS X. And Seagate's firmware update is basically a Windows solution that requires lots of extra effort to work on any other OS.
Remember when Seagate bought Maxtor in 2006? You are really having trouble with Maxtor drives that are now branded Seagate. I'm going to guess you bought the less expensive ones. Before Maxtor and Seagate merged, I had about 12 drives in machines in my house. 5 of them were Maxtor and all of those failed within 18 months. Some of the others are still going. (Original Seagate and WD drives). Unfortunately it is hard to know if you are going to get the "good" or the "bad" Seagate drives now.
$1.375 billion or $990 million formatted.
I recently had a 1.5TB External Seagate drive. it worked for a few months then started clicking and within 2 weeks the thing failed. I did some google searching and really REALLY wish i had done more research before buying the drive because it is a very common problem. I even got a replacement and the same thing happened. I have read of someone having 5 replacements in 6 months. Seagate are aware there is a problem as they replace the drive instantly but no public recall.
Google Link to LOTS of web pages details the issues http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Seagate+External+drive+clicking
Seagate Forums
http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Other-External-products/Seagate-Expansions-producing-loud-clicking-sound/td-p/30962/page/3
http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Maxtor-OneTouch-Products/Maxtor-External-Hard-Drive-Clicking-Noise-Not-Working/td-p/16446
http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Other-External-products/Solution-Seagate-Expansion-Desktop-External-Drive-clicking/td-p/49865
I could supply more links, but from a personal view NEVER use seagate for anything but Throw away data. I was using it as a backup for my PC and in the end lost 500gb of data in the process.
Do not by Seagate hard drives
Hitachi GST is in the process of being acquired by WD, so if in the mean time Seagate is acquiring Samsung's HDD lines, then we've seen the amount of choice shrink greatly in only a few months.