Digital Storage Technology News

2021

Total hard drive production in 2021 was about 260 HDD units.
Toshiba announced that it shipped a record number of HDDs increasing by 100% from 2020.
Hard drives continue to maintain great price ($/TB) advantage compared to SSDs. Areal ferromagnetic density increases to continue to drive down the storage price.

2016

Seagate launches world's first USB-Powered Desktop Hard Drive - Innov8 8TB.

Seagate launches 10TB Helium Enterprise Hard Drive and 8 Terabyte Hard Drive for NAS

2015

SanDisk (one of the largest flash memory manufacturer) was acquired by Western Digital.

2014

Seagate completes acquisition of LSI's Flash businesses to boost integrating LSI's Enterprise PCIe flash and SSD controller products.

2012

Hitachi HGST was acquired by Western Digital.

Western Digital announces the first 2.5-inch, 5mm thick drive, and the first 2.5-inch, 7mm thick drive with two platters.
Last available models: WD5000LPVT is 500 GB, WD3200LPVT is 320 GB, and WD2500LPVT is 250 GB.

TDK demonstrates 2TB on a single 3.5-inch platter

Hitachi announces helium-filled hard disk drives, promising cooler operation and the ability to increase the maximum number of platters from five to seven in the 3.5" form factor.

2011

First 4.0 terabyte hard drive from Seagate

Seagate completes acquisition of Samsung's HDD business

2010

First Hard Drive Manufactured by using the Advanced Format of 4,096 bytes a block (4K) instead of 512 bytes a block

First 3.0 terabyte hard drive from Seagate and Western Digital

2009

Toshiba buys Fujitsu hard disk drive business