06 January 2011
Seagate is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of hard drives and storage solutions with a history marked with many breakthroughs. The first product they produced was the ST-506, the first hard disk to fit the 5.25-inch form factor of the then famous “mini-floppy drive.” Needless to say, the hard disk was a hit, and was shortly after upgraded from the 5-megabyte to the 10-megabyte version, the ST-412.
It is the ST-412 hard disk which fueled Seagate’s early growth as it was the hard disk used by the first personal computer to contain a hard disk, the IBM XT. Back then, IBM was the largest supplier of personal computers and purchased a volume of hard disks from Seagate that was large enough to propel Seagate to financial viability.
Seagate was the first hard disk drive company to ship the 50 millionth hard disk drive
On November 1, 1978, Al Shugar, Tom Mitchell and four others co-founded Shugart Technology as a disc drive manufacturer. Shugart Technology was later named into Seagate Technology to avoid confusion with Shugart Associates, a Xerox subsidiary which was also founded by Shugart.
Alan Shugart, the brains behind Seagate was a brilliant engineer, a shrewd businessman and astute corporate executive whose name is synonymous with the hard disk drive industry. He was born in Los Angeles, California and had a degree in engineering physics. He worked at the IBM in San Jose California where he quickly climbed up the corporate ladder to become the Direct Access Storage Product Manager, responsible for IBM’s disk storage products. The team which invented the floppy disk directly reported to him.
Seagate Company Highlights
In 1993, Seagate was the first hard disk drive company to ship the 50 millionth hard disk drive. Six years later, it shipped its 250 millionth. And 9 years later, in 2008, Seagate was the first to ship 1 billion hard drives.
Seagate was also the first to introduce Fibre Channel Interface hard drive in 1997, the first 15,000-RPM hard drive in 2000, did the first hybrid drive in 2006 and released the first portable 1.5TB hard drive in September of this year.
In 2006, Seagate was named “Company of the Year” by Forbes magazine.
In 2009 the company registered a net income of US$3 billion, employed 54,000 people and sold such products as the Barracuda, Seagate Black Armour and Maxtor, among others.
The company has had its share of corporate problems, internal bickering and a lawsuit but still remains as the world’s trailblazers and leaders in the hard disk drive industry.
