News Seagate to absorb Samsung's hard drive business

Seagate plans to buy Samsung's hard drive division and get NAND in return.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2011/04/19/samsung-and-seagate-announce-strategic-agre/1

 

I'll miss Samsung. They were essentially my goto HDD manufacturer because they were the most reliable in my experience. Guess I'll be WD only from now on

 

I too, will miss Samsung. In my over 30 years of selling hardware, Samsung was the most reliable out there, bar none. Seagate also seems to historically have had real difficulty with change - hopefully the appointment of one of Samsungs people onto the board of Seagate will give them the shot in the arm they need to step up. Time will tell.

 

As long as Spinpoints still exist in this arrangement then cool. Well until SSDs come down a bit more in price.

 

If it makes for a better and possible cheaper set of hdd and ssd devices then so be it. Im sure they'll be around in one form or another just not under a Samsung name.

 

It will mean the end of reliable samsung hard disks. Seagate make hard disks with short lifespans.

 

I personally have found seagate drives to be as reliable as their samsung counterparts, so really don't see a problem there. My main concern is now the shortage of compitition in the hdd market. Who's left: Western Digital? I hope prices don't suffer.

 

Its sad because as others have said, Samsung's were just my simple default go-to HDD, which I recommended to everyone. I might actually have to start looking at the HDD reviews.

 

I have found just the opposite. Every seagate drive I have owned has developed sector errors after a few years. A friend also experienced the same. Also someone else I know had a screwed system last year. Turns out one of the drives was screwed. Shock, surprise - it was a seagate! There was only one company worse than seagate and that was maxtor. Maxtor were bought out by seagate. It would be a shame for samsung to go the same way.

 

Samsung drives are great, super reliable, solid performance and often the cheapest component on the market. It is this kind spec that may be losing them money (they obviously did not catch as much of the market share as their bean counters predicted) so with Samsung out of the picture I am worried that mediocre product and inflated pricing may become the standard.

 

I have an old 250 GB maxtor drive, it's 7 years old, still going. Obviously not as fast as the WD or F1 i have next to it, but it still works. I am sad to see samsung go, and I'm worried about competition.

 

Like lots of others, Samsung are my go-to company for HDDs. I hope they read these enthusiast mag columns and see the mistake they've made.

 

I reckon they know that already, we just do not make up enough of the market to make it economically viable. If you break up a Dell or HP you will most likely find a WD or Seagate drive inside, I think Samsung would have liked to have gotten some of these contracts by now but without it they were onto a loser no matter how good their drives are. With shares and a clear revenue stream the Seagate deal must look very solid to Samsung at the moment.

 

Rather than nay-saying this deal, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that I hope Seagate learns a lesson from Samsung on how to produce a decent drive. Sadly, I feel it's gonna take a few years before we see any results from the deal, though.

 

I love how all the comments are people arguing the toss about which drives are the most reliable...

Surely the huge concern is that there will now be just 3 main hard drive competitors in Seagate, Western Digital and Hitachi (plus Fujitsu/Toshiba perhaps)?

The numbers have been dwindling for years... can't do any good for the consumers.

 

Well I guess I know I'll be buying a Samsung F4eg or two before the year is out then. *sigh*

One more product/company to be run in to the dust.

I hope it means that Seagate will at least adopt Samsungs better stuff. Like, oh their entire drive line and drop their own drive line. The LP/green Seagates seem decent at first, until you have experience with them. I want low power, quite and speed (and reliability) that equals Samsung.

 

I'll buy a drive or two before they disappear, should be on the safe side for a few years.

 

damn
modern seagoats drives ive had have been disapointing, had a couple with clunk of death :/

 

What HardDrive reviews? I don't think bit-tech has done one since the F3's first shipped (not counting SSD's or externals). Can't say I've noticed others around either, not that I've been looking. No need, what with the F3 being so good.

 

I would have been a Samsung person following the good revies in Custom PC, but after finding that Samsung drives were incompatible with my P5K Premium I ended up with a Seagate. The real question is whether they will keep both brands going, as Seagate and Samsung are kind of at opposite ends of the price bands.