It has been estimated that over 200 companies were hard disk drive manufacturers at one time or another. Besides competing on features such as hard disk (HDD) data density and latencies, many of those companies started to support new, smaller form factors that enabled the ever-reducing physical sizes of computing devices. Most of that industry has been reduced to 5 strong vendors through bankruptcy and acquisition. As of 2009, these vendors are Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung, Toshiba, and Hitachi.

Here follows a list of notable defunct HDD manufacturers:

• Apple, Inc. - produced the proprietary Lisa 20MB Widget drive in house in 1984 for less than two years before leaving the hard drive business.
• Atasi Corp. - bankrupt
• Areal Technology - acquired by Tomen Corp
• Cogito Systems - bankrupt
• Sony
• Computer Memories Inc. (CMI) - left industry in 1986
• Conner Peripherals - merged with Seagate in 1996
• Conner Technologies - merged with ExcelStor in 2001
• Control Data Corporation/Imprimis - sold hard disk drive business to Seagate in 1989
• Cornice LLC - bankrupt in 2007^[1]
• Digital Equipment Corporation - sold hard disk drive business to Quantum in 1994
• Epson - left industry
• ExcelStor Technology - left industry
• Fujitsu - HDD division acquired by Toshiba in July 2009^[2]
• Hewlett-Packard - left industry
• IBM - hard disk drive business acquired by Hitachi in 2002
• Integral Peripherals - first 1.8" rigid HDD; bankrupt in 1998
• International Memories (IMI) - spun off by Memorex in 1977; left industry in 1985
• Iomega - left industry
• JT Storage - bankrupt in 1999
• JVC - left industry
• Kalok - bankrupt in 1994
• Kyocera - left industry
• LaPine Technologies
• Maxtor - acquired by Seagate in 2006
• Memorex - acquired by Burroughs 1981 and then merged into Unisys 1986; HDD division shut down in 1988.
• Micropolis Corporation - bankrupt in 1997
• Microscience International - bankrupt in 1992
• MiniScribe - bankrupt and then acquired by Maxtor in 1990
• Ministor - bankrupt in 1998
• Mitsubishi - left industry
• NEC - left industry
• PrairieTek - first 2.5" rigid HDD; bankrupt in 1991
• Priam Systems - sold product line to Prima International in 1991
• Quantum Corporation - sold hard disk drive business to Maxtor in 2000
• Rahm Rotationals - renamed and merged in 1994 to Tamir Tech (purchased by Quantum 1995)
• Rodime - first 3.5" rigid HDD; shut down manufacturing in 1991; licensed its patents until the patent business was sold for $1.5M in July 2003. The company was then the subject of a reverse merger and became Sportech PLC
• Storage Technology Corporation(StorageTek or STK) - left industry
• Syquest - bankrupt in 1998; some patents acquired by Iomega. Re-emerged selling cartridges for their previously-discontinued products.
• Tandon - acquired by Western Digital in 1988
• Texas Instruments - left industry
• Tulin Corporation - bankrupt

[edit] References

1. ^ http://www.storagesearch.com/cornice.html Storage Search on Cornice
2. ^ http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2009_04/pr3001.htm

[edit] External links

• The Dynamics of the HDD Industry Development in Singapore