Manufacturers of Hard Drives

There were around 200 companies that ventured into the production of hard drives since the device attained popular market demand. The stiff competition for increasing capacities and reduction of physical sizes of hard drives required constantly advancing technologies. Due to high financial and technological demands of hard drive manufacturing, a lot of companies have folded, ceased production, entered into mergers, or have been acquired by much larger companies.

Today, it is estimated that about 98 percent of hard drives are produced by a small number of manufacturers. Fujitsu, a Japanese company, produces hard drives for servers, workstations, and laptops.

It used to manufacture drives for desktop computers but has left the market in 2001. Hitachi, another Japanese multinational, has cornered a larger share of the market after it acquired the hard drive manufacturing division of IBM. The company supplies hard drives for desktops, laptops, mobile phones, camcorders, music players, and industrial uses.

Currently the biggest manufacturer of hard drives is Seagate. It produces hard drives for different types of computers, from notebooks to servers and is also the hard disk supplier of Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox, and Creative Zen line of digital audio players. Seagate has acquired its rival Maxtor in 2005. Western Digital ranks second to Seagate as a maker of hard drives. Other hard drive manufacturers include Toshiba, Samsung, and ExcelStor.