There probably won't be any more consolidation until spinning rust is in its final death throws. Toshiba currently owns the part of Hitachi's former HDD division that WD wasn't able to keep for anti-trust reasons.
Consolidation has been happening for better or worse in the storage industry for decades. I read somewhere awhile back there were, at one point, over 200 manufactures in the magnetic storage industry.
Quantum bought Connor, Maxtor bought Quantum, Seagate bought Maxtor - mostly to get Quantum's DLT patents...they shelved practically all Maxtor technology and killed the brand, Seagate bought Samsung's magnetic storage division too I believe, Hitachi bought IBM storage, Toshiba and Hitachi signed a technology sharing agreement, WD bought HGST - complicating the whole Toshiba situation and resulting in some inherent IP licensing, then you have the oddball drives like Fujitsu who make their OWN exclusive platters through Fuji heavy industries which is really ridiculous to think about...I guess WD bought Komag awhile back but I don't think anything came of it as WD doesn't make platters they use Showa Denko and Komag just seemed to go away...
It seems Toshiba and WD drives both use a lot of Hitachi technology - they operate and feel very similar even down to the noises they make. You take them apart and see the motors and platters are all the same brands...Showa platters, JVC actuators, Nidec motors, TDK heads...even the cases have the same footprint and controllers are all off the shelf chips from LSI (Seagate), Addonics (Fujitsu) and Marvell (WD\Toshiba). I've even seen the same Hitachi-developed SMOOTH ASIC on WD and Toshiba controller PCB's.
Long story short, we are down to what, 4-5 manufactures. It's like to stay that way. What I am worried about is these hard drive cartels buying up SSD\NAND manufactures. WD bought Sandisk, Toshiba bought OCZ (which got them Indilinx) and Seagate bought LSI (which got them Sandforce) and so on...
M, I don't agree with your last part. We have 4-6 big Players in NAND Manufacturing: Micron with Intel, Toshiba with SanDisk (now WD), Samsung and Hynix.
The only acquisition was Sandisk by WD. And Toshiba by a consortium. To buy a Flash-Controller manufacturer isn't a big thing. We have a lot and it's easy for new players to enter the market. Toshiba bought OCZ but since then no controller came off that. Sandforce 3 was canceled. Hynix bought LAMD and no new controller any more.
We have controllers from Intel, WD and Samsung itself. Big 3rd party players like SMI, Phison and Marvell. Where Marvell is a bit loosing ground. And some smaller ones like JMicron (now Maxiotek) and new to the game Realtek. Of course there are some enterprise controller in the market like Flashtec too.
SSD manufacturer itself have no IP from interest. They relabel SSDs or build them on their own with help of referenz models. Kingston does their own drives and bin their NAND themselves, but that isn't rocket science and the same with some OEM manufacturers. It's the NAND manufacturer that counts. And to a small part controller manufacturer.
We're still several years from flash becoming cheaper than HDDs on a $/TB basis; until that point is reached there's still a market for big HDDs for bulk data storage in NASes or data centers.
The most recent estimate I've seen is a few years old and was predicting mid 2020's for the crossover.
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shabby - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
No asmr? Disappointed...colinstu - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
that requires a rebuild of eight 15k RPM SCSI drives.Alexvrb - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
Ignore young Skycolinstuwalker. They don't need to be 15K SCSI drivers to do ASMR...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYnqVUx0Dzw
colinstu - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
So when is WD or Seagate going to buy out Toshiba's HDD division?DanNeely - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
There probably won't be any more consolidation until spinning rust is in its final death throws. Toshiba currently owns the part of Hitachi's former HDD division that WD wasn't able to keep for anti-trust reasons.Beaver M. - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
Wrong. They kept it all. They just had to share some with Toshiba.Samus - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link
Consolidation has been happening for better or worse in the storage industry for decades. I read somewhere awhile back there were, at one point, over 200 manufactures in the magnetic storage industry.Quantum bought Connor, Maxtor bought Quantum, Seagate bought Maxtor - mostly to get Quantum's DLT patents...they shelved practically all Maxtor technology and killed the brand, Seagate bought Samsung's magnetic storage division too I believe, Hitachi bought IBM storage, Toshiba and Hitachi signed a technology sharing agreement, WD bought HGST - complicating the whole Toshiba situation and resulting in some inherent IP licensing, then you have the oddball drives like Fujitsu who make their OWN exclusive platters through Fuji heavy industries which is really ridiculous to think about...I guess WD bought Komag awhile back but I don't think anything came of it as WD doesn't make platters they use Showa Denko and Komag just seemed to go away...
It seems Toshiba and WD drives both use a lot of Hitachi technology - they operate and feel very similar even down to the noises they make. You take them apart and see the motors and platters are all the same brands...Showa platters, JVC actuators, Nidec motors, TDK heads...even the cases have the same footprint and controllers are all off the shelf chips from LSI (Seagate), Addonics (Fujitsu) and Marvell (WD\Toshiba). I've even seen the same Hitachi-developed SMOOTH ASIC on WD and Toshiba controller PCB's.
Long story short, we are down to what, 4-5 manufactures. It's like to stay that way. What I am worried about is these hard drive cartels buying up SSD\NAND manufactures. WD bought Sandisk, Toshiba bought OCZ (which got them Indilinx) and Seagate bought LSI (which got them Sandforce) and so on...
KarlKastor - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
M, I don't agree with your last part. We have 4-6 big Players in NAND Manufacturing: Micron with Intel, Toshiba with SanDisk (now WD), Samsung and Hynix.The only acquisition was Sandisk by WD. And Toshiba by a consortium.
To buy a Flash-Controller manufacturer isn't a big thing. We have a lot and it's easy for new players to enter the market.
Toshiba bought OCZ but since then no controller came off that. Sandforce 3 was canceled.
Hynix bought LAMD and no new controller any more.
We have controllers from Intel, WD and Samsung itself. Big 3rd party players like SMI, Phison and Marvell. Where Marvell is a bit loosing ground. And some smaller ones like JMicron (now Maxiotek) and new to the game Realtek. Of course there are some enterprise controller in the market like Flashtec too.
SSD manufacturer itself have no IP from interest. They relabel SSDs or build them on their own with help of referenz models. Kingston does their own drives and bin their NAND themselves, but that isn't rocket science and the same with some OEM manufacturers.
It's the NAND manufacturer that counts. And to a small part controller manufacturer.
Alexvrb - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
Now to combine HAMR and MAMR into... MAHAMR.kawmic - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link
Fuck hdd. Concentrate on making better cheaper ssd's instead. Insane to keep producing obsolete crap.ksec - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link
That is until you have Exabyte or Zetabyte of Data to backup. HDD are going to be a DC / Enterprise Storage usage only.DanNeely - Monday, March 18, 2019 - link
We're still several years from flash becoming cheaper than HDDs on a $/TB basis; until that point is reached there's still a market for big HDDs for bulk data storage in NASes or data centers.The most recent estimate I've seen is a few years old and was predicting mid 2020's for the crossover.