In my last post (the one and only Vlog post on this site….so far….), I briefly mentioned the Seagate - Maxtor merger which was officially announced last December but has yet to receive much press. For desktop video editors, I see this as being a big deal.

According to iSuppli, Seagate already owns 30% of the HDD market. The general breakdown goes like this:

Manufacturer / HDD Market Share

Seagate / 30%
Western Digital / 18%
Hitachi / 15.5%
Maxtor / 13.5%

Segate’s acquisition of Maxtor has culminated in a $1.9 BILLION dollar ALL STOCK transaction. The new company will remain operating under the Seagate brand, and all public info regarding product lines suggests the combined company has no plans of killing off any existing products.

Seagate states that as a result of this merger, the company “has the enhanced scale and capacity to better drive technology advances and accelerate delivery of a wide range of differentiated products and cost-effective solutions to a growing customer base.” In addition to this corporate jargon, Seagate is also looking forward to saving what they report as $300 million dollars a year in operating costs (could be because about half of Maxtor’s worldwide employees will be laid off).

What Does This Mean For Desktop Editors? (3 issues: warranty, technology, price)

For starters, Seagate has been a preferred hard drive vendor for Apple for quite some time - building everything from miniature iPod Drives, to 2.5″ notebook drives, and up through the PowerMac tower HDDs and XSAN drives (Seagate isn’t the only brand that Apple uses, mind you). As far as Apple is concerned, this merger probably means little…at least in the short term.

Maxtor drives (again, among others) commonly pop up in those ever so popular LaCie Firewire storage enclosures (if you’ve edited desktop video in last seven years, chances are, you’ve used a LaCie Firewire drive at some point).

The biggest difference between Seagate and Maxtor drives is that alone, Seagate HDD’s ship from the factory with five year warranties while Maxtor HDD’s ship with only a one year warranty (this also depends on the model, but as a general rule it holds true).

My biggest question is wether the Maxtor acquisition will cause a dilution of quality in the Seagate drives (for example, will they be sharing parts/ factories now????). Many editors have used Maxtor drives for years without trouble, but I have not. In my history of desktop editing (and that’s a long history), my only problems have been with Maxtor drives in LaCie enclosures - all resulting in total mechanical failure of the drive. As you know, total mechanical failure of the drive IS VERY BAD. No more data. Goodbye projects (hopefully you had a backup…but most likely…you didn’t). Seagate drives on the other hand, have given me zero trouble to date (and why should they with a five year warranty and all - doesn’t that suggest the company is building bombproof stuff?).

One positive outlook on this merger suggests Seagate has been eyeing Maxtor’s technology progress on perpendicular storage. Perhaps, if anything, this means that the combined company will be consolidating R&D resources and information - thus resulting in quicker rollout of the technology, and eventually, 1 TB notebook drives (or how about a 1 TB iPod drive…).

Additionally, if Seagate believes the acquisition of Maxtor will result $300 Million a year in savings, perhaps those additional savings will be passed onto the customers (US!). Errr…but me thinks not. This merger of two of the leading HDD manufactures will actually lead to LESS competition, and who needs to lower prices without competition (especially since storage demand is only increasing)?

All in all, this merger between Seagate and Maxtor could mean nothing to end users. At least for now, product lines will remain the same, prices will remain consistent, no new technology will be immediately available, and quality issues (either increasing or decreasing) are yet to be seen. However, these are two huge publicly traded companies who’s products effect almost every single film/ video editor in the world.

I know for my money, time, and passion - I’d like to know who’s making the gear I depend on and how they’re making it. I’m no journalist, but if you are, and you think you can get through all the corporate speak, call Seagate’s PR line (831) 439-2838 and ask for Brian Zeal. He hasn’t returned my call yet, but perhaps he’ll talk to you.

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Links to more sources:

here / here / here