Seagate produces innovative storage solutions tackling humanity‘s exponentially growing data universe. But how did this computing hardware giant get its start? When was it founded? And who are the technologists behind decades of cutting-edge data storage advances bearing the Seagate name?
This comprehensive guide on all-things Seagate will trace the origin story, transformative technologies, business evolution, and even controversies behind one of the world‘s most ubiquitous data storage brands.
Overview
- Founded: 1979 in Scotts Valley, California by Alan Shugart, Finis Conner and partners
- Industry: Computer data storage hardware and services
- Key innovations: First HDD for personal computers (1980 5MB drive), fastest HDDs, hybrid drives and various recording technologies increasing drive capacity over 40+ years
- Current position: Top hard disk drive manufacturer controlling 43% of global HDD market
- Revenue: Over $10 billion annually
- Product portfolio: Hard drives, solid-state drives, storage systems, platforms and cloud services meeting both consumer and enterprise needs
Now let‘s rewind and uncover…
From Ashes of Shugart Associates, Seagate Founders Forge a New Path
The Seagate origin story traces back to co-founder Alan Shugart‘s previous venture – Shugart Associates – founded in 1973. Shugart Associates mainly focused on producing hard disk drives for the minicomputer market.
However, the firm filed for bankruptcy just three years later in 1976. Most would retreat after such a failure, but Shugart reconvened with engineer Finis Conner who shared a vision of a new trend on the horizon: personal and microcomputers.
Shugart and Conner predicted small, affordable PCs for homes and offices would drive massive demand for low-cost, high-capacity disk storage. So the persistent pair founded Seagate Technology in Scotts Valley, California in 1979 to specifically target mushrooming personal computer storage opportunities.
They brought on three other founding partners via venture capital investment – Doug Mahon, Tom Mitchell, and Syed Iftikar. Naming the company "Seagate" paid homage to Shugart‘s previous successful venture while marking a fresh, optimistic new starting point.
Seagate Timeline: The Early Days and Founding
| Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 1976 | Shugart Associates goes bankrupt |
| 1978 | Alan Shugart and Finis Conner first discuss a new hard drive startup |
| 1979 | Seagate Technology officially incorporated in California |
| 1979 | Initial venture capital raised from Mitchell, Mahon and Iftikar |
Propelled by the founders‘ strategic vision and early financing, Seagate Technology was ready to make its pioneering mark on the data storage world.
ST-506: Seagate‘s Breakthrough Drive Makes Personal Computers Practical
In 1980, just one year after its creation, Seagate fired the opening salvo in the personal computer storage wars – launching the ST-506 hard disk drive.
The ST-506 drive was a compact 5.25-inch unit storing a then-astonishing 5MB of formatted data. But beyond raw capacity, the ST-506 drive had two other key advantages tailor-made for personal computers:
- Small physical size – allowing integration into desktop PCs
- Low cost – hitting an affordable price point for average consumers
Prior hard drives targeted at minicomputers were not engineered for economical, high volume production. Nor could their bulky, fragile mechanics fit inside a petite PC case.
So the ST-506 – custom-made for microcomputers – was a pivotal product release making PCs useful for mainstream business and home applications.
It provided vital storage room for early operating systems, programs, files and user data well beyond what floppy disks could hold.
IBM Deal Cements Early Success
Beyond featuring advanced technology, the founding team struck a crucial strategic deal with computing giant IBM that helped bootstrap Seagate‘s early success.
Specifically, IBM agreed to feature Seagate‘s ST-506 drives across its entire line of IBM XT personal computers released in 1983. This contract supplied desperately needed revenue flow for the fledgling company while also providing implicit endorsement from the most respected name in computing.
Over 60% of Seagate‘s drives shipped in the 1980s ended up in various IBM machines – fueling rapid production expansion. By 1989, Seagate surpassed Miniscale to become the world‘s highest volume hard drive maker – a title it has yet to relinquish across over 30 consecutive years and counting.
Beyond IBM, Seagate also signed partnerships with other major PC manufacturers helping boost mind share and sales of its drives as computing went mainstream.
Pushing Performance Limits with Barracuda, Cheetah…and Many Firsts
Under founder Alan Shugart‘s leadership as CEO throughout the 1980s, Seagate secured a dominant market share on the back of innovative drive technology. But in 1989, Shugart passed the reins to Michael C. Markkula Jr., an Apple veteran known for building world-class management teams.
Markkula ushered in a renewed emphasis on pace-setting research and development – pushing fastest performance limits while cracking capacity barriers.
Smashing RPM Records: The 7200 RPM Barracuda
In the early 90s, most hard drives maxed out at 5400 RPM spindle speeds. So Markkula‘s team aimed higher – targeting blazing fast 7200 RPM performance.
In May 1991, the daring push bore fruit with the release of Barracuda – the world‘s first 7200 RPM 3.5-inch hard disk drive. Spinning data 33% quicker than existing drives, the Barracuda delivered previously unheard of data access times as low as 8.5 milliseconds!
The initial family topped out at a gargantuan 2.1GB. But across 30+ years and over 60+ generations, Seagate has built on the original Barracuda – successively releasing faster models with ever-growing capacities meeting both consumer and enterprise needs.
And in 1996, Seagate topped itself again – introducing Cheetah drives spinning at a feverish 10,000 RPM – fast enough for high demand network servers.
Pushing Aerial Data Storage Density Limits
Rather than just chasing raw speed, Seagate also pioneered multiple revolutionary recording technologies squeezing more bits into the same physical space – driving exponential capacity growth without ballooning drive sizes.
Key density-boosting advances included:
- Perpendicular recording (2006) – allowed bits vertically rather than just horizontal direction
- Shingled magnetic recording (2009) – overlapping tracks like shingled roofs to cut wasted space
- Heat-assisted magnetic recording (2013) – locally heating media so bits remain stable packed more tightly at room temperature
- Helium sealed drives (2013) – using lighter helium instead of air inside drives reduces turbulence allowing closer mounting of super high density platters
Combining aerial density gains with ever growing platter counts, Seagate has achieved astonishing capacity scaling – from 10s of MBs to 60+ TB drives in just over 30 years!
Riding Industry Explosions by Partnering Across Computing
Beyond pushing technical limits, Seagate strategically aligned with new applications and ecosystem partners – ensuring its drives would ship in best-selling devices across every sphere of computing.
For example, in 2000, Seagate secured the hard drive supply contract for Sony‘s hotly anticipated PlayStation 2 console. When the PS2 proved a runaway commercial success, Seagate enjoyed surging sales of specially configured, high-shock tolerance drives meeting demanding gaming system requirements.
Similarly, after Steve Jobs tapped Seagate to provide ultra-slim drives for early iPods in 2001, explosive sales of Apple‘s iconic music player again fueled massive shipment volumes.
And riding the wave of 90s personal computing growth supercharged overall market demand – allowing Seagate to eclipse an astonishing 50 million drives shipped by 1993 and 1 billion by 2008.
Beyond specializing drives for gaming, mobile, and PC markets – Seagate also leaned aggressively into booming enterprise server and cloud infrastructure expansions; supplying high capacity, high workload drives for data centers while also offering complete storage subsystems and data management platforms.
Aligning innovations with winning ecosystem partners ensured Seagate capitalized on every personal and commercial computing boom from the post-PC mobile revolution back to the original PC explosion.
Empire Building: Massive Acquisitions to Rule Storage
Beyond engineering better drives, Seagate strategically acquired competitive firms over the years – absorbing talent and IP while consolidating market share.
Major acquisitions enabling empire expansion included:
- Imprimis Technology (1989) – Early rival gobbed up to expand market presence
- Conner Peripherals (1996) – $1.1 billion purchase of early top drive competitor Conner after Western Digital
- Maxtor (2006) – Consumer/desktop drive major acquired for $1.9 billion
- Xyratex (2013) – Enterprise storage enclosures and capital equipment capabilities added
- Dot Hill Systems (2015) – Brought in storage systems IP and teams for $694 million
Most recently in April 2022, Seagate closed a gigantic $1.5 billion acquisition of Japanese HDD binding company Showa Denko – further vertically integrating key components for delivering complete storage solutions.
This expansive M&A strategy cemented Seagate as the dominant player – controlling over 50% of the HDD market by the late 90s. And even today, it still leads with a 43% global share by units shipped and 38% by exabytes sold.
Choppy Waters: Controversies, Lawsuits & Economic Struggles
Despite meteoric success, Seagate‘s four-decade journey hasn‘t always followed smooth waters. Like any icon, there have been stumbles…
Financial restatements – In 1993, Seagate executives including CEO Al Shugart resigned after overstating inventory in financial reports to hide dropping market valuations – resulting in restatements and SEC penalties
Large scale layoffs – Through various economic downturns in 1983, 1993, and 1998 Seagate had to reduce headcounts by thousands – destabilizing the business
Quality controversies – Flaws in certain models like the 1.5TB Barracuda 7200.11 or 3TB 7200.14 drives caused above average failure rates and even class action lawsuits by disgruntled customers
Security breaches – In 2016, researchers uncovered security bugs enabling potential remote code execution on some wireless Seagate hard drives
Export regulation violations – In October 2021, Seagate paid $45 million to settle SEC charges related to violating US export policies banning sales of restricted tech to Huawei between 2018-2020
While Seagate ultimately overcame these stumbles, it demonstrates even the most influential tech giants must endure ups and downs to remain viable across multiple decades.
Global Data Explosion Creates Massive Storage Opportunities
Today, Seagate remains firmly entrenched as the top hard drive maker for traditional spinning magnetic media – now pushing capacities past 20TB. HDDs retain cost and capacity advantages at data center scale.
However, solid state drives are displacing HDDs in laptops, high performance systems, and devices requiring resilience. So Seagate is rapidly expanding SSD offerings to complement strengths in platter drives – even demonstrating 60TB+ SSDs in R&D.
And with the staggering growth of data across multiple spheres from cloud computing, to autonomous vehicles, 5G networks, IoT sensors, genomics mapping, and more – demand for high capacity, resilient, economical data storage marches relentlessly upward.
IDC forecasts worldwide data creation to explode from 59 zettabytes in 2020 to 175 ZB by 2025 – a blistering 2x growth every 12-18 months! And Seagate through vertically integrated technology R&D as well as storage platforms and services stands poised to tackle the challenge head on.
So despite facing some storms, Seagate still charts steady, innovative progress into data‘s exponentially expanding frontier – proving resilient and strategically sound for over 40 prospering years…and counting!
