# Hard Drive Manufacturers: Western Digital (WDC) and Seagate Technology (STX)



## killuminati (Mar 14, 2011)

Yes I am getting this idea from here 

I personally don't think hard drives are going anywhere for years to come and the prices look really attractive. The flood situation is over and there are less companies out there to keep the prices war of ultra cheap drives going.

STX is up over 90% on the year and still pays 25cents per quarter. Its trading only 7x earnings right now too.

Any opinions here?


----------



## dotnet_nerd (Jul 1, 2009)

killuminati said:


> I personally don't think hard drives are going anywhere for years to come...


Are you kidding me? Hard-drives are fast becoming dinosaurs. They'll soon be replaced by Solid State drives

They're already standard on many new laptops. My desktop Win7 machine runs on one.


----------



## killuminati (Mar 14, 2011)

dotnet_nerd said:


> Are you kidding me? Hard-drives are fast becoming dinosaurs. They'll soon be replaced by Solid State drives
> 
> They're already standard on many new laptops. My desktop Win7 machine runs on one.


Do you store all your audio, video and high res images on that tiny SSD? SSD as a boot drive yes, but as a storage device?

Also who said Seagate and WD don't sell SSDs?


----------



## brad (May 22, 2009)

killuminati said:


> Do you store all your audio, video and high res images on that tiny SSD?


You can buy laptops with 550 gig SSDs, although they're awfully pricey.

But yes, Seagate and WD are in the SSD market too so it doesn't matter. Of the two, I think WD would be my choice, if only because they seem to understand their customers better; I find their products easier to set up and use. But maybe Seagate would be a leader when it comes to OEM and WD would be a leader in aftermarket.

With more and more people downloading movies and TV shows, and with digital cameras capable of taking very good video, I think demand for external/supplementary storage will continue to grow. Cloud storage doesn't really cut it for that stuff because of upload/download times and ISP bandwidth restrictions.


----------



## dotnet_nerd (Jul 1, 2009)

killuminati said:


> Do you store all your audio, video and high res images on that tiny SSD?


One day soon.



killuminati said:


> Also who said Seagate and WD don't sell SSDs?


Newegg

This space is owned by Intel, Corsair, Sandisk, OCZ et. el.

WD, Seagate etc. are not chipmakers, it's an entirely different product.

Did CCM switch from making bicycles to cars back when the automobile was invented?


----------



## buhhy (Nov 23, 2011)

I bought WDC 2 days ago. They seem to have better fundamentals than STX, though STX pays a dividend. Not to mention WDC will have a higher ramp up in production since more of their factories were flooded.

HDD will be around for quite a while, since SSDs haven't reached the same levels of reliabilities. Guess what, the "cloud computing" "post-PC" paradigm everyone keeps harping about uses HDD to store data. WDC also makes hybrid SSDs, which are catching on.


----------



## Sampson (Apr 3, 2009)

dotnet_nerd said:


> One day soon.


My guess is that it'll be a ways yet until hard drives a dead.

Imagine how much a series of SSD drives would cost Google for their storage. It would be more money than there is in the whole World.

That being said, I've never looked into the two companies and where their revenues come from. If the majority of their money is made selling 1-2TB drives for mom and pop, then the companies are probably in trouble in the medium term.


----------



## buhhy (Nov 23, 2011)

This is from WDC 2011 annual report:

client compute: 151 147 109
client non-compute: 46 38 33
enterprise: 10 9 4

the slow growth in 2011 can be partially attributed to the floods, since WDC was hit much worse than STX. Client compute is generally OEM PC parts, non-compute parts are the external harddrives, enterprise are servers.

This is from STX 2011 annual report (note, their fiscal year ends in July, so the floods don't show in the report):

client compute: 132 135 114
client non-compute: 38 33 27
enterprise: 29 25 22

STX has a much better enterprise position, but WDC's acquisition of Hitachi's HDD division should help pad its lineup of SAS drives, and even the market shares.


----------



## indexxx (Oct 31, 2011)

killuminati said:


> Do you store all your audio, video and high res images on that tiny SSD? SSD as a boot drive yes, but as a storage device?
> 
> Also who said Seagate and WD don't sell SSDs?


Many feel the Cloud will negate the need for external drives for storage.


----------



## brad (May 22, 2009)

indexxx said:


> Many feel the Cloud will negate the need for external drives for storage.


As noted above, cloud storage uses HDD, so someone's still going to be buying them.

Also as noted above, as long as ISPs continue to impose monthly bandwidth limits, many people are not going to keep their large media files in the cloud (video, audio, movies, TV, etc.). And those are exactly the kind of files that tend to be stored on external drives.


----------



## buhhy (Nov 23, 2011)

indexxx said:


> Many feel the Cloud will negate the need for external drives for storage.


Not gonna happen. Don't believe the post-PC, cloud computing drivel. Those "paradigm-shift" buzzwords are created by marketing and business folks who don't understand technology. First, cloud storage is way more expensive than SSD's. Second, cloud servers use SAS HDD's to store the data; SSD servers are prohibitively expensive. Consider that enterprise server backups still use MAGNETIC TAPES to backup their data. Third, privacy concerns, and internet connectivity requirements will keep cloud storage from being ubiquitous for the time being. If anything, HDD's will be replaced by hybrid SSD, and SSD's in the consumer sector. High-end ultrabooks will use SSD's, while lower end ultrabooks/sleekbooks and other business laptops will use HDD or hybrid SSD's.


----------



## Sherlock (Apr 18, 2010)

I remember one of my old computers from the early 80s had a 10 mb seagate hard drive in it.

I think OCZ would be a better choice, they came out of nowhere, a few years ago no one had heard of them and now they're one of the biggest manufacturers of SSDs and PSUs around.


----------



## dave2012 (Feb 17, 2012)

I buy pretty much just Seagate Barracudas. Prices are still pretty high compared to last year so I've been putting off buying lately. Used to be able to get a 2TB for something like $59 before the flooding.

Sadly the days of a 5 year warranties seem to be gone. Its only 1 year now. I've never had any issues with Seagate's in the last 25 years, but I worry about these shorter warranties now.

I used to buy some drives at Future Shop a few years back. NEVER again. Every single one failed after several months. Pure crap.

Seagate Go Flex drives have been my choice for ultra portable backups for the shirt pocket.

I don't see Cloud or SSD as solutions for those of us with huge storage needs (photos/videos) any time soon. Way to expensive.


----------



## Sherlock (Apr 18, 2010)

dave2012 said:


> I don't see Cloud or SSD as solutions for those of us with huge storage needs (photos/videos) any time soon. Way to expensive.


But look what happened to hard drive prices, a 10 mb was $3000 in the late 70s and then I remember paying something like $150 for my 20 gb hard drive in 2000, and then about $70 for my 2tb drive a year ago, so why couldn't the same thing happen to SSDs? They're already down to less than a dollar a gigabyte, in 5 years we'll probably have 2 tb ssd drives for $100.

I really don't see the point of a long warranty on a harddrive (or any PC equipment really), because the value of an old hard drive is probably not much more than the cost of shipping the item to the manufacturer for a replacement, much less hassle to just throw it out and buy a new one. That's what I did when my old 50 gb ssd died a few months ago. It was still under warranty but I figured the cost to ship it to the manufacturer in California, plus the cost to buy some kind of box to ship it in, plus the inconvenience of getting to the post office, wasn't worth it so I just bought a new ssd.


----------



## dotnet_nerd (Jul 1, 2009)

_"640K ought to be enough for anybody."_

-Bill Gates, 1981


----------



## buhhy (Nov 23, 2011)

dotnet_nerd said:


> _"640K ought to be enough for anybody."_
> 
> -Bill Gates, 1981


128GB ought to be enough for anybody.

Edit: SSD's will marginalize HDD's in the notebook consumer market in a few years. They won't make HDD's obsolete.


----------



## avrex (Nov 14, 2010)

This thread from last year is funny, because there was some concern about the death of hard-drives  and the fact that these companies derive a significant amount of revenue from hard-drives.

Here's what's happened in the last 2 weeks:
Dec 4 - Morgan Stanley upgraded Western Digital
Dec 13 - Citigroup upgraded Western Digital and Seagate
Dec 17 - JPMorgan upgraded both Western Digital (WDC) and Seagate (STX) after its research indicated *the rate of change away from hard-disk-drives to Flash-based storage in PCs is not accelerating. *

I've been enjoying the rise of WDC; *90%* increase in stock price, year-to-date. Lucky pick for me.


----------



## Xoron (Jun 22, 2010)

avrex said:


> I've been enjoying the rise of WDC; *90%* increase in stock price, year-to-date. Lucky pick for me.


I bought into STX (Seagate) and I'm up about the same amount (not including dividends). My holding period has been slightly longer (Sept 2012). Quite happy to see that hard drives are still alive and kicking.


----------



## Just a Guy (Mar 27, 2012)

Well, in that same period, I've probably had 4 WD drives fail...my seagate ones are fine.


----------



## killuminati (Mar 14, 2011)

avrex said:


> This thread from last year is funny, because there was some concern about the death of hard-drives  and the fact that these companies derive a significant amount of revenue from hard-drives.
> 
> Here's what's happened in the last 2 weeks:
> Dec 4 - Morgan Stanley upgraded Western Digital
> ...


Yeah, I caught a lot of flack on here... glad I didn't listen


----------

