Seagate

Seagate Technology is a major hard disk and tape storage manufacturer, headquartered in Scotts Valley, California. Seagate is the oldest of the independent hard disk makers, and still one of the largest (they were #1 for many years).

The company was founded in 1979 by Alan Shugart (back from a sabbatical after getting pushed out of Shugart Associates) and Finis Conner; their first product (released in 1980) was the ST-506, the first hard drive to fit the 5.25" form factor of the (by then famous) Shugart "mini-floppy" drive. Sales were good, and the company grew, introducing a 10-megabyte version of the 506, the ST-412, and later developing high-speed drives for the PC/AT (they supplied IBM with drives after the infamous CMI debacle in 1985).

In 1986, Conner left to start his own hard-drive company, Conner Peripherals, which specialised in small-form-factor drives for portables and (eventually) desktops; Conner also entered the tape drive business with their purchase of Archive. AFter ten years on their own, Conner rejoined Seagate in a 1996 merger. Also, in 1989, Seagate entered the high-end drive market with their purchase of Control Data's MPI/Imprimis disk storage division.

In 1992 they introduced the Barracuda, the industry's first hard drive with a 7200 rpm spindle speed. They followed this with the Cheetah (the first 10,000 rpm drive) in 1996 and the X15 (15,000 rpm) in 2000.