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Seagate Technology Holdings plc is an American
data storage Data storage is the recording (storing) of information (data) in a storage medium. Handwriting, phonographic recording, magnetic tape, and optical discs are all examples of storage media. Biological molecules such as RNA and DNA are con ...
company. It was incorporated in 1978 as Shugart Technology and commenced business in 1979. Since 2010, the company has been incorporated in
Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...
, Ireland, with operational headquarters in
Fremont, California Fremont () is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. Located in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, Bay Area, Fremont has a population of 230,504 as of 2020, making it the fourth List of cities and towns in the San F ...
, United States. Seagate developed the first 5.25-inch
hard disk drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...
(HDD), the 5-megabyte ST-506, in 1980. They were a major supplier in the
microcomputer A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (P ...
market during the 1980s, especially after the introduction of the IBM XT in 1983. Much of their growth has come through their acquisition of competitors. In 1989, Seagate acquired
Control Data Corporation Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a mainframe and supercomputer company that in the 1960s was one of the nine major U.S. computer companies, which group included IBM, the Burroughs Corporation, and the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), the N ...
's Imprimis division, the makers of CDC's HDD products. Seagate acquired Conner Peripherals in 1996,
Maxtor Maxtor Corporation was an American computer hard disk drive manufacturer. Founded in 1982, it was the third largest hard disk drive manufacturer in the world before being purchased by Seagate Technology, Seagate in 2006. It was revived as a bra ...
in 2006, and
Samsung Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...
's HDD business in 2011. Today, Seagate, along with its competitor
Western Digital Western Digital Corporation is an American data storage company headquartered in San Jose, California. Established in 1970, the company is one of the world's largest manufacturers of hard disk drives (HDDs). History 1970s Western Digital ...
, dominates the HDD market.


History


Founding as Shugart Technology

Seagate Technology (then called Shugart Technology) was incorporated on November 1, 1978, and commenced operations with co-founders Al Shugart, Tom Mitchell, Doug Mahon, Finis Conner, and Syed Iftikar in October 1979. The company came into being when Conner approached Shugart with the idea of starting a new company to develop 5.25-inch HDDs which Conner predicted would be a coming economic boom in the disk drive market. The name was changed to Seagate Technology to avoid a lawsuit from Xerox's subsidiary
Shugart Associates Shugart Associates (later Shugart Corporation) was a computer peripheral manufacturer that dominated the floppy disk drive market in the late 1970s and is famous for introducing the -inch "Minifloppy" floppy disk drive. In 1979 it was one of the ...
(also founded by Shugart).


Early history and Tom Mitchell era

The company's first product, the ST-506, with a storage capacity of 5
megabytes The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Its recommended unit symbol is MB. The unit prefix ''mega'' is a multiplier of (106) in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one megabyte is one million bytes ...
(MB), was released in 1980. It was the first hard disk to fit the 5.25-inch form factor of the Shugart mini-floppy drive. It used a Modified Frequency Modulation (MFM) encoding and in the following year released a 10 MB version, the ST-412. With this, Seagate secured a contract as a major OEM supplier for the IBM XT,
IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
's first personal computer to contain a hard disk. The large volumes of units sold to IBM fueled Seagate's early growth. In their first year, Seagate shipped $10 million worth of units to consumers. By 1983, the company shipped over 200,000 units for revenues of $110 million. In 1983, Al Shugart was replaced as president by then chief operating officer, Tom Mitchell, in order to move forward with corporate restructuring in the face of a changing market. Shugart continued to oversee corporate planning. By this point, the company had a 45% market share of the single-user hard drive market, with IBM purchasing 60% of the total business Seagate was doing at the time. In 1989, Seagate acquired Imprimis Technology, the disk storage division of
Control Data Corporation Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a mainframe and supercomputer company that in the 1960s was one of the nine major U.S. computer companies, which group included IBM, the Burroughs Corporation, and the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), the N ...
, resulting in a combined market share of 43%. Seagate benefited from Imprimis' head technology and reputation while Imprimis gained access to Seagate's lower component and manufacturing costs.


Second Al Shugart era (1990s)

In September 1991, Tom Mitchell resigned as president under pressure from the board of directors, with Al Shugart reassuming presidency of the company. Shugart refocused the company on its more lucrative markets, and on mainframe drives instead of external drives. He also pulled away from outsourcing component production overseas. This allowed Seagate to better keep up with demand for PCs, which increased extremely rapidly in 1993 across the market. This included a domestic partnership with
Corning Inc. Corning Incorporated is an American multinational technology company specializing in glass, ceramics, and related materials and technologies including advanced optics, primarily for industrial and scientific applications. The company was name ...
, which began using a new glass-ceramic compound to manufacture disk substrates. In 1991, Seagate also introduced the
Barracuda A barracuda is a large, predatory, ray-finned, saltwater fish of the genus ''Sphyraena'', the only genus in the family Sphyraenidae, which was named by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1815. It is found in tropical and subtropical oceans worldw ...
HDD, the industry's first hard disk with a 7,200 RPM spindle speed. In May 1993, Seagate became the first company to cumulatively ship 50 million HDDs over its firm's history. The following year, Seagate Technology Inc moved from the
Nasdaq The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...
stock exchange to the
New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is the List of stock exchanges, largest stock excha ...
, trading under the ticker symbol SEG. Upon leaving, the company was the 17th-largest company in terms of trading volume on the Nasdaq exchange. In 1996, Seagate merged with Conner Peripherals to form the world's largest independent hard-drive manufacturer. Following the merger, the company began a system of consolidating the components and production methods within its production chain of factories in order to streamline how products were built between plants. In May 1995, Seagate Technology acquired Frye Computer Systems, a software company based in
Boston, Massachusetts Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...
. This company developed the LAN monitoring software kit ''The Frye Utilities for Networks'', which won
PC Magazine ''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and continues . Overview ''PC Mag ...
's "Editor's Choice" award in 1995. In 1996, Seagate introduced the industry's first hard disk with a 10,000 RPM spindle speed, the Cheetah 4LP. By 2000, this product increased to a speed of 15,000 RPM with the release of the Cheetah 15X. In May 1997, the
High Court of Justice The High Court of Justice in London, known properly as His Majesty's High Court of Justice in England, together with the Court of Appeal (England and Wales), Court of Appeal and the Crown Court, are the Courts of England and Wales, Senior Cour ...
in England awarded
Amstrad Amstrad plc was a British consumer electronics company, founded in 1968 by Alan Sugar. During the 1980s, the company was known for its Home computer, home computers beginning with the Amstrad CPC and later also the ZX Spectrum range after the ...
PLC $93 million in a lawsuit over reportedly faulty disk drives Seagate sold to Amstrad, a British manufacturer and marketer of personal computers. That year, Seagate also introduced the first
Fibre Channel Fibre Channel (FC) is a high-speed data transfer protocol providing in-order, lossless delivery of raw block data. Fibre Channel is primarily used to connect computer data storage to Server (computing), servers in storage area networks (SAN) in ...
interface hard drive. In 1997, Seagate experienced a downturn, along with the rest of the industry. In July 1998, Shugart resigned his positions with the company. Stephen J. "Steve" Luczo became the new chief executive officer, also joining the board of directors.


First Steve Luczo era (1998–2004)

Luczo joined Seagate Technology in October 1993 as Senior Vice President of Corporate Development. In March 1995, he was appointed Executive Vice President of Corporate Development and chief operating officer of Seagate Software Holdings. In 1996, Luczo led the Seagate acquisition of Conner Peripherals, creating the world's largest disk drive manufacturer and completing the company's strategy of
vertical integration In microeconomics, management and international political economy, vertical integration, also referred to as vertical consolidation, is an arrangement in which the supply chain of a company is integrated and owned by that company. Usually each ...
and ownership of key disk drive components. In September 1997, he was promoted to the positions of President and Chief Operating Officer. In 1998, the board appointed Luczo as the new CEO and Seagate launched a restructuring effort. Historically, Seagate's design centers had been organized around function, with one product line manager in charge of tracking the progress of all programs. In 1998, Luczo and CTO Tom Porter called for an organizational redesign of design centers into core teams focused on individual projects, in order to meet the corporate objective of faster
time to market In commerce, time to market (TTM) is the length of time it takes from a product being conceived until its being available for sale. The reason that time to market is so important is that being late erodes the addressable market into which produ ...
. As the CEO, Luczo decided to increase investment in technology and to diversify into faster-growing, higher-margin businesses. He decided to implement a highly automated platform strategy for manufacturing. Between 1997 and 2004, Seagate reduced its headcount from approximately 111,000 to approximately 50,000, reduced its manufacturing factories from 24 to 11, and reduced design centers from seven to three. During this period, Seagate's output increased from approximately 9 million drives per quarter to approximately 20 million drives per quarter. In 1998, the company's Seagate Research facility was also established in
Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...
, a $30 million investment that focused on future technologies and prototypes. Technology developed by the facility would include devices like the hard drive disk for Microsoft's first
Xbox Xbox is a video gaming brand that consists of four main home video game console lines, as well as application software, applications (games), the streaming media, streaming service Xbox Cloud Gaming, and online services such as the Xbox networ ...
. In 1999, Seagate shipped its 250 millionth hard drive. In May 1999, Seagate sold its Network & Storage Management Group (NSMG) to
Veritas Software Veritas Technologies LLC is an American international data management company headquartered in Mountain View, California, Santa Clara, California. The company has its origins in Tolerant Systems, founded in 1983 and later renamed Veritas Softwa ...
in return for 155 million shares of Veritas' stock. With this deal, Seagate became the largest shareholder in Veritas, with an ownership stake of more than 40%.


Re-privatization (2000)

In 2000, Seagate became a private company again. Luczo led a management buyout of Seagate, believing that Seagate needed to make significant
capital investment Investment is traditionally defined as the "commitment of resources into something expected to gain value over time". If an investment involves money, then it can be defined as a "commitment of money to receive more money later". From a broade ...
s to achieve its goals. He decided to turn the company private, since disk drive producers had a hard time obtaining capital for long-term projects. The company was incorporated in
Grand Cayman Grand Cayman is the largest of the three Cayman Islands and the location of the territory's capital, George Town, Cayman Islands, George Town. In relation to the other two Cayman Islands, it is approximately 75 miles (121 km) southwest of L ...
and stayed private until it re-entered the public market in 2002. In early November 1999, Luczo met with representatives of Silver Lake Partners to discuss a major restructuring of Seagate. After two failed attempts to increase Seagate's stock price and unlock its value from Veritas, Seagate's board of directors authorized Luczo to seek advice from
Morgan Stanley Morgan Stanley is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered at 1585 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. With offices in 42 countries and more than 80,000 employees, the firm's clients in ...
in October 1999. In early November 1999, Morgan Stanley arranged a meeting between Seagate executives and representatives of Silver Lake Partners. On November 22, 2000, Seagate management, Veritas Software, and an investor group led by Silver Lake closed a complex deal that
privatized Privatization (rendered privatisation in British English) can mean several different things, most commonly referring to moving something from the public sector into the private sector. It is also sometimes used as a synonym for deregulation w ...
Seagate. At the time, this was the largest buyout ever of a technology company. The total deal, worth about $20 billion, included the sale of its disk-drive operations for $2 billion to an investor group led by Silver Lake Partners. The goal of the deal was to unlock the value of the 33% ownership stake Seagate had in Veritas, which had put the value of Seagate's stock at around $33 billion even though its market cap was only $15 billion. Following the relocation to the
Cayman Islands The Cayman Islands () is a self-governing British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory, and the largest by population. The territory comprises the three islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, which are located so ...
in 2000, the legal name of a holding company was simplified to Seagate Technology. The ''de facto'' operational company, incorporated in Delaware, became a
limited liability company A limited liability company (LLC) is the United States-specific form of a private limited company. It is a business structure that can combine the pass-through taxation of a partnership or sole proprietorship with the limited liability of ...
(LLC) named Seagate Technology LLC and operates to this day as such. Both the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Harvard Business School have written multiple case studies on the Seagate buyout and turnaround. In addition, several leading management books cite the Seagate turnaround.


Re-emerging as a public company (2002–2010)

Luczo became the chairman of the board of directors of Seagate Technology on June 19, 2002. In 2003, he accepted an invitation from the New York Stock Exchange to join its Listed Companies Advisory Committee. In 2003, Seagate re-entered the HDD market for notebook computers and provided the 1-inch hard drives for the first
iPod The iPod is a series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices that were designed and marketed by Apple Inc. from 2001 to 2022. The iPod Classic#1st generation, first version was released on November 10, 2001, about mon ...
s. This led to a trend of digital devices being created with progressively more and more memory, especially in cameras and music devices. In September 2004, ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' called Seagate "the nation's top maker of hard drives used to store data in computers", following the company forecasting its quarterly revenue above Wall Street estimates. In 2004, the company separated the roles of chairman and CEO. Luczo resigned as the Seagate CEO on July 3, but retained his position as chairman of the board of directors. Bill Watkins became CEO. At the beginning of 2006, ''
Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...
'' magazine named Seagate its Company of the Year as the best managed company in the United States. ''Forbes'' wrote that, "Seagate is riding the world's gadget boom. Its 1-inch drives are the archives for cameras and MP3 players." It also credited Seagate as being the company that "sparked the personal computer revolution 25 years ago with the first 5.25-inch hard drive for the PC". In April 2006, Seagate announced the first professional Direct-To-Disc
digital cinema Digital cinema is the digital technology used within the film industry to distribute or project motion pictures as opposed to the historical use of reels of motion picture film, such as 35 mm film. Whereas film reels have to be shipped to mo ...
professional video camera A professional video camera (often called a television camera even though its use has spread beyond television) is a high-end device for creating electronic moving images (as opposed to a movie camera, that earlier recorded the images on film). O ...
aimed at the independent filmmaking market. This technology used Seagate's HDDs. In 2007, Seagate created the
hybrid drive A hybrid drive (solid state hybrid drive – SSHD, and dual-storage drive) is a logical or physical computer storage device that combines a faster storage medium such as solid-state drive (SSD) with a higher-capacity hard disk drive (HDD). Th ...
concept. In 2007, Seagate announced the "phase out" of
parallel ATA Parallel ATA (PATA), originally , also known as Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE), is a standard interface designed for IBM PC-compatible computers. It was first developed by Western Digital and Compaq in 1986 for compatible hard drives and C ...
hard disk drives by early 2008. In April 2008, Seagate was the first to ship one billion HDDs. According to ''CNET'', it took 17 years to ship the first 100 million and 15 years to ship the next 900 million. In 2009, Bill Watkins was released from employment as CEO. On August 27, 2008, Seagate's stock listing was transferred to the
NASDAQ Global Select Market The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...
(NASDAQ-GS large cap), trading under the same ticker symbol, STX.


Second Steve Luczo era (2009–2017)

In January 2009, Luczo was asked by the Seagate Board to return as CEO of the company, replacing Bill Watkins. As of the date of his hiring, Seagate was losing market share, facing rapidly declining revenues, was lagging in product delivery with high manufacturing costs, had an excessive operating expense structure, and had $2 billion of debt that was due within 2 years. The company's market value was less than $1.5 billion. Luczo revamped the entire management team, and quickly reorganized the company back to a functional structure after a failed attempt to organize by business units in 2007. Led by a new Head of Sales (Dave Mosley), a new head of Operations and Development (Bob Whitmore), and a new CFO (Pat O'Malley), the team worked to address the multitude of challenges that it faced. By the end of 2009, the company had refinanced its debt and had begun to turn around its operations. In 2010, Seagate reinstated its dividend and began a stock buyback plan. In 2010, Seagate announced that it was moving its headquarters and most of its staff from Scotts Valley to Cupertino, California. In June 2010, Seagate released the world's first 3 TB hard drive. That September, Seagate released the first portable 1.5 TB hard drive. In July 2011, the company changed its country of incorporation from the Cayman Islands to Ireland. Since then, the holding company became a
public limited company A public limited company (legally abbreviated to PLC or plc) is a type of public company under United Kingdom company law, some Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth jurisdictions, and Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It is a limited liability co ...
(PLC) named Seagate Technology plc. In December 2011, Seagate acquired Samsung's HDD business. Seagate also acquired a license to use Samsung trademark on HDD products for 5 years; after license expired, Seagate rebranded all Samsung-branded external HDD products to Maxtor, a company that Seagate acquired at the end of 2005. After the acquisition, internal HDDs from former Samsung factories were simultaneously branded as Samsung and Seagate, and then were exclusively branded as Seagate. In 2012, Seagate continued to raise its dividend and repurchased nearly 30% of the company's outstanding shares. In the fiscal year ending June 2012, Seagate had achieved record revenues, record gross margins, record profits, and regained its position as the largest disc drive manufacturer. Its market value had increased to over $14 billion. In March 2012, Seagate demonstrated the first 1 TB/square inch density hard drive, with the possibility of scaling up to 60 TB by 2030. In 2013, Seagate was the first HDD company to begin shipment of shingled magnetic recording drives, announcing in September that they had already shipped over 1 million such drives. In February 2016, Seagate received a class action lawsuit concerning defective hard drives. In August 2016, Seagate demonstrated its 60 TB SSD—claimed to be "the largest SSD ever demonstrated"—at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara. In January 2017, Seagate announced the shutdown of one of its largest HDD assembly plants, located in Suzhou, China. The plant became part of Seagate after Maxtor's acquisition in 2006; Maxtor started producing hard drives in Suzhou in 2004.


Dave Mosley era (2017–present)

On July 25, 2017, David "Dave" Mosley was appointed CEO, effective from October 1, 2017 after longtime CEO, Steve Luczo stepped down and became executive chairman. In June 2018, Seagate was honored at the 14th Annual Manufacturing Leadership Awards Gala in
Huntington Beach, California Huntington Beach is a seaside city in Orange County, California, United States. The city was originally called Pacific City, but it was changed in 1903 to be named after American businessman Henry E. Huntington. The population was 198,711 as of ...
. In 2018, Seagate invested in Series A and B of Ripple, an enterprise blockchain company. In 2019, Seagate invested £47 million in a research and development project at its factory in
Derry Derry, officially Londonderry, is the second-largest City status in the United Kingdom, city in Northern Ireland, and the fifth-largest on the island of Ireland. Located in County Londonderry, the city now covers both banks of the River Fo ...
, Northern Ireland. In 2020, Seagate announced that it was moving its headquarters and most of its staff from Cupertino to Fremont, California. From May to June that year, the company laid off 500 employees across 12 countries due to a push for better operational efficiencies. Seagate planned for the rearrangement of more resources, including combining facilities in
Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...
. In September 2020, Seagate announced it had entered the object storage business and introduced CORTX, an open-source object storage software, Lyve Rack, a reference architecture based on CORTX, and a corresponding developer community. The community is a group of open-source researchers and developers working to advance mass-capacity object storage. CORTX open-source software is hosted for download and collaboration on
GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...
. As of May 18, 2021, the new Irish public limited company Seagate Technology Holdings plc became the publicly traded parent company of Seagate, replacing "Seagate Technology plc." In November 2021, at the Open Compute Summit, Seagate demonstrated the industry's first HDD with a non-volatile memory express (NVMe) interface. This was unusual because HDDs operate far below the capabilities of the NVMe interface, which is usually associated with faster storage media like SSDs. In May 2022, Seagate presented and demonstrated their
LiDAR Lidar (, also LIDAR, an acronym of "light detection and ranging" or "laser imaging, detection, and ranging") is a method for determining ranging, ranges by targeting an object or a surface with a laser and measuring the time for the reflected li ...
system at the Autosens conference in Detroit. In February 2023, it divested its LiDAR division to Luminar Technologies. In October 2022, Seagate announced a restructuring plan to reduce headcount by 8%, equivalent to approximately 3,000 jobs. On January 17, 2024, Seagate announced the release of the first 30 TB HDD with the Exos Mozaic 3+ HDD series. The series utilizes
Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording Heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) (pronounced "''hammer''") is a magnetic storage technology for greatly increasing the amount of data that can be stored on a magnetic device such as a hard disk drive by temporarily heating the disk materia ...
(HAMR) and Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) technology with an areal density of 3 TB per platter. The 30 TB Mozaic 3+ drive uses ten platters, only one more than the 16 TB Exos X16. Seagate plans to ramp capacity of their HAMR drives, eventually reaching an areal density of 5 TB per platter by 2028. Seagate claims the new drives will have a cheaper cost per TB compared to existing drive models. The series is initially only available to enterprise markets, but is expected to be available to end users by mid 2025. In February 2025, Seagate announced it would acquire HDD equipment maker Intevac for $119 million in an all-cash deal.


Products


Internal SSD and HDD storage

Seagate offers various internal
solid-state drive A solid-state drive (SSD) is a type of solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuits to store data persistently. It is sometimes called semiconductor storage device, solid-state device, or solid-state disk. SSDs rely on non- ...
(SSD) and
hard disk drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...
(HDD) products that are classed by name for their intended usage: * Barracuda – Seagate's most popular and inexpensive general-usage SSDs and HDDs meant for devices such as
computer A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...
s,
laptop A laptop computer or notebook computer, also known as a laptop or notebook, is a small, portable personal computer (PC). Laptops typically have a Clamshell design, clamshell form factor (design), form factor with a flat-panel computer scree ...
s, gaming consoles, and
set-top box A set-top box (STB), also known as a cable converter box, cable box, receiver, or simply box, and historically television decoder or a converter, is an information appliance device that generally contains a Tuner (radio)#Television, TV tuner inpu ...
es. The Barracuda HDD series has speeds of 5,200–7,200 RPM, storage capacities of 500 GB8 TB, with max speeds up to 190 MB/s. The Barracuda SSDs come with either
SATA SATA (Serial AT Attachment) is a computer bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PATA) standard ...
or
NVMe NVM Express (NVMe) or Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface Specification (NVMHCIS) is an open, logical-device interface specification for accessing a computer's non-volatile storage media usually attached via the PCI Express bus. The in ...
interface, storage sizes from 240 GB2 TB, and read speeds up to 560 MB/s for SATA and 3,400 MB/s for NVMe. * Firecuda – For gaming usage in computers, laptops, and gaming consoles. Seagate offers internal and external Firecuda SSDs and HDDs with SATA, NVMe, or
USB-C USB-C, or USB Type-C, is a 24-pin reversible Electrical connector, connector (not a Communication protocol, protocol) that supersedes previous USB hardware#Connectors, USB connectors (also supersedes Mini DisplayPort and Lightning (connector) ...
interface with storage capacity between 250 GB16 TB. * Ironwolf
NAS Nas (born 1973) is the stage name of American rapper Nasir Jones. Nas, NaS, or NAS may also refer to: Aviation * Nasair, a low-cost airline carrier and subsidiary based in Eritrea * National Air Services, an airline in Saudi Arabia ** Nas Air (S ...
device storage drives, with HDD storage capacities of 1–20 TB, regular or helium drive type, SATA interface, and up to 260 MB/s. Ironwolf SSDs have capacities of 240 GB4 TB, SATA or NVMe interface, and speeds up to 560 MB/s for SATA and 3,150 MB/s for NVMe. * Skyhawk – Surveillance system recording drives for use in devices like DVRs or NVRs that come in 2 series. The first series, the Skyhawk AI, has capacities of 8–18 TB, regular or helium drive type, CMR recording technology, and speeds up to 260 MB/s. The regular Skyhawk series has capacities of 1–8 TB, regular drive type, CMR or SMR recording technology, and speeds up to 210 MB/s. * Exos – Enterprise drives for usage in datacenters, with three series offered: *# Exos E – capacities of 300 GB8 TB, SAS or SATA interface, and speeds up to 300 MB/s. *# Exos X – capacities of 12–20 TB, helium drive type, SAS or SATA interface, and speeds up to 524 MB/s on certain models. *# Exos Mozaic 3+ – 30TB+ capacity, 7200 RPM spindle speed and 512 MB cache. Was introduced in 2023 with less storage as Exos X. Mozaic 3+ will be sold not only to enterprise customers but also to end users, no specialised hardware is needed to read. * Nytro – Series of enterprise
Serial Attached SCSI In computing, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) is a point-to-point serial Communications protocol, protocol that moves data to and from Computer storage, computer-storage devices such as hard disk drives, solid-state drives and tape drives. SAS replac ...
Solid State Drives, with capacities up to 15 TB.


External SSD and HDD storage

Seagate offers various external storage product series for computers and laptops: * Seagate Basic External HDDs * Backup Plus External HDDs * Backup Plus Hub External HDDs * Photo Drive External HDDs * Barracuda Fast External SSDs * Seagate Expansion External SSD and HDDs * One Touch External SSD and HDDs * Ultra Touch External SSD and HDDs


Gaming console storage

Seagate has partnered with both
PlayStation is a video gaming brand owned and produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), a division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. Its flagship products consists of a series of home video game consoles produced under the brand; it also consists ...
and
Xbox Xbox is a video gaming brand that consists of four main home video game console lines, as well as application software, applications (games), the streaming media, streaming service Xbox Cloud Gaming, and online services such as the Xbox networ ...
to offer various storage devices for the
PlayStation 4 The PlayStation 4 (PS4) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 3 in February 2013, it was launched on November 15, 2013, in North America, November 29, 2013, in ...
,
Xbox One The Xbox One is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. Announced in May 2013, it is the successor to Xbox 360 and the third console in the Xbox#Consoles, Xbox series. It was first released in North America, parts of Europe, Austra ...
and
Xbox Series X/S The Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S are the fourth generation of consoles in the Xbox series, succeeding the previous generation's Xbox One. Released on November 10, 2020, the higher-end Xbox Series X and lower-end Xbox Series S are part o ...
. For the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One Series, Seagate offers the "Game Drive" which is a 2–4 TB USB 3.0 external hard drive. Additionally for the Xbox One series, Seagate now offers a "New Game Drive" in capacities of 2–5 TB and a "Game Drive Hub" which has a capacity up to 8 TB, both of which also use the USB 3.0 interface. During the development of the new Xbox Series X/S, Seagate partnered with Xbox to make a proprietary SSD expansion card that is inserted into the back of the console, available in a capacity of 1 TB, with 2 TB planned to be made later.


Lyve Cloud

Lyve Cloud is a cloud-based storage service first offered by Seagate in February 2021. It was developed in partnership with Equinix and is intended for enterprise usage.


Data storage systems

Seagate offers various data storage systems for enterprises such as "compute & storage convergence platforms" and flash, hybrid, and disk arrays. In June 2021, Seagate introduces the Exos CORVAULT, a 4U block storage system with dual storage controllers powered by Seagate's own VelosCT chip. The storage array uses Advanced Distributed Autonomic Protection Technology (ADAPT) and Autonomous Drive Regeneration (ADR) for automating maintenance and thus reducing e-waste.


Legacy product lines

Some of Seagate's old product lines that are no longer produced include: * U-Series – Lower performance, cheaper desktop HDDs introduced in the late 1990s. *
Medalist A medalist (or medallist) is an artist who designs medals, plaquettes, badges, metal medallions, coins and similar small works in relief in metal. Historically, medalists were typically also involved in producing their designs, and were usually e ...
– A line of mainstream HDDs for use in desktops and more. Later replaced by the Barracuda series. *
Cheetah The cheetah (''Acinonyx jubatus'') is a large Felidae, cat and the Fastest animals, fastest land animal. It has a tawny to creamy white or pale buff fur that is marked with evenly spaced, solid black spots. The head is small and rounded, wit ...
– High speed & performance HDDs with speeds of 10,000–15,000 RPM. Discontinued in the early 2000s. * Momentus – High performance laptop HDDs. *
Decathlon The decathlon is a combined event in athletics consisting of 10 track and field events. The word "decathlon" was formed, in analogy to the word "pentathlon", from Greek δέκα (''déka'', meaning "ten") and ἄθλος (''áthlos'', or ἄ ...
– High performance desktop hard disk drives that were popular but expensive at the time.


Corporate affairs

Seagate was initially traded as a
public company A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of share capital, stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter (finance), over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) co ...
on the
Nasdaq The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...
stock exchange under the
ticker symbol A ticker symbol or stock symbol is an abbreviation used to uniquely identify publicly traded Share (finance), shares of a particular stock or Security (finance), security on a particular stock exchange. Ticker symbols are arrangements of symbols ...
SGAT. In 1994, it moved to the
New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is the List of stock exchanges, largest stock excha ...
as SEG. In 2000, Seagate incorporated in the Cayman Islands in order to reduce income taxes. In 2000, the company was taken private by an investment group composed of Seagate management, Silver Lake Partners,
Texas Pacific Group TPG Inc., previously known as Texas Pacific Group and TPG Capital, is an American private equity firm based in Fort Worth, Texas. TPG manages investment funds in growth capital, venture capital, public equity, and debt investments. The firm in ...
, and others in a three-way merger-spinoff with
Veritas Software Veritas Technologies LLC is an American international data management company headquartered in Mountain View, California, Santa Clara, California. The company has its origins in Tolerant Systems, founded in 1983 and later renamed Veritas Softwa ...
; Veritas merged with Seagate, which was bought by the investment group. Veritas was then immediately spun off to shareholders, gaining rights to Seagate Software Network and Storage Management Group (with products such as
Backup Exec Veritas Backup Exec is a data protection software product designed for customers with mixed physical and virtual environments, and who are moving to public cloud services. Supported platforms include VMware and Hyper-V X86 virtualization, virtual ...
), as well as Seagate's shares in SanDisk and Dragon Systems. Seagate Software Information Management Group was renamed
Crystal Decisions Crystal Decisions (previously known as '' Seagate Software Information Management Group'') was a company that was known for its business intelligence products. The company was formed when hard disk drive manufacturer Seagate Technology acquired ...
in May 2001. In December 2002, Seagate re-entered the public market on the Nasdaq as STX. By November 2023, 89% of the stock was controlled by institutional investors, with a controlling stake of 52% held by 8 investors. The largest stakes held by hedge funds Vanguard Group, Inc, Sanders Capital, LLC and
BlackRock BlackRock, Inc. is an American Multinational corporation, multinational investment company. Founded in 1988, initially as an enterprise risk management and fixed income institutional asset manager, BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager ...
, Inc. account for 11%, 7.2%, 7.2% of shares outstanding respectively.


Partnerships and acquisitions

Finis Conner left Seagate in early 1985 and founded Conner Peripherals, which originally specialized in small-form-factor drives for portable computers. Conner Peripherals also entered the tape drive business with its purchase of Archive Corporation. After ten years as an independent company, Conner Peripherals was acquired by Seagate in a 1996 merger. In 2005, Seagate acquired Mirra Inc., a producer of personal servers for data recovery. It also acquired ActionFront Data Recovery Labs, which provides data recovery services. In 2006, Seagate acquired
Maxtor Maxtor Corporation was an American computer hard disk drive manufacturer. Founded in 1982, it was the third largest hard disk drive manufacturer in the world before being purchased by Seagate Technology, Seagate in 2006. It was revived as a bra ...
in an all-stock deal worth $1.9 billion, and afterwards continued to market the separate Maxtor brand. The following year, Seagate acquired EVault and MetaLINCS, later rebranded as i365. In 2014, Seagate acquired Xyratex, a storage systems company, for approximately $375 million. The same year, it acquired LSI's flash enterprise PCIe flash and SSD controller products, and its engineering capabilities, from
Avago Broadcom Inc. is an American multinational designer, developer, manufacturer, and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, ...
for $450 million. In October 2015, Seagate acquired Dot Hill Systems, a supplier of software and hardware storage systems, for approximately $696 million.


Controversies

In 2015, Seagate's NAS drives—a type of wireless storage device—was found to have an undocumented hardcoded password. On January 21, 2014, numerous tech articles around the globe published findings from the cloud storage provider
Backblaze Backblaze, Inc. is an American cloud storage and Backup, data backup company based in San Mateo, California. It was founded in 2007 by Gleb Budman and others. Its two main products are their B2 Cloud Storage and Computer Backup services, targete ...
that Seagate
hard disks A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...
are least reliable among prominent hard disk manufacturers. However, the Backblaze tests have been criticized for having a flawed methodology that has inconsistent environment variables, such as ambient temperatures, vibration, and disk usage. In addition, Backblaze's statistics show that the vast majority of their installed drives are manufactured by Seagate, and Backblaze editor Andy Klein has noted "that a large number of new Seagate drives being deployed could be statistically responsible" for failure rate data in their specific datacenter population. In the broader landscape, Seagate enterprise drives were named "most reliable" for seven years running in the IT Brand Pulse survey of top IT professionals, and cited as the leader for the previous two years in every measured category: reliability, performance, innovation, price, and service and support. In 2019, Backblaze released updated statistics which reported that Seagate drives had the most failures in Q2 2019, whereas its best-rated drives were made by Toshiba. In October 2021, a report by U.S. Senate Republicans claimed that Seagate violated
Export Administration Regulations The Export Administration Regulations (EAR) are a set of United States export guidelines and prohibitions. They are administered by the Bureau of Industry and Security, which regulates the export restrictions of sensitive goods. The EAR apply ...
by selling parts and components to
Huawei Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ("Huawei" sometimes stylized as "HUAWEI"; ; zh, c=华为, p= ) is a Chinese multinational corporationtechnology company in Longgang, Shenzhen, Longgang, Shenzhen, Guangdong. Its main product lines include teleco ...
following U.S. sanctions against the Chinese telecommunications company. The company received another letter in August 2022 from the U.S. Commerce Department's
Bureau of Industry and Security The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce that deals with issues involving national security and high technology. A principal goal for the bureau is helping stop the proliferation of weap ...
(BIS) for allegedly violating export sanctions to sell Huawei hard drives. Seagate denied any violations claiming that its foreign-made hard drives are not subject to the restriction since the disks and the equipment to make them were not a direct product of any American semiconductor technology or software. In April 2023, Seagate reached a settlement agreement with the Department agreeing to pay $300millionthe largest civil penalty imposed by the BISfor selling over 7.4 million hard drives to Huawei without BIS authorization. The resolution also included three stages of audits focusing on its export controls compliance program and a suspended denial order.


References


External links

* {{Authority control 1979 establishments in California American brands American companies established in 1979 Companies based in Fremont, California Companies listed on the Nasdaq Companies formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange Computer companies established in 1979 Computer hardware companies Computer storage companies Hard disk drives Information technology companies of the United States Private equity portfolio companies Silver Lake (investment firm) companies Computer companies of the United States Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area 2000 mergers and acquisitions 2002 initial public offerings Tax inversions