4 ms·
HGST, formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, part of WD as of 2012. The cool thing about them was that their consumer Deskstars were at least as reliable
by currysausage 11y ago
HGST, formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, part of WD as of 2012. The cool thing about them was that their consumer Deskstars were at least as reliable as enterprise disks by other manufacturers. I still have 12-year-old PCs here with HGST 80 and 160 GB drives that were subject to daily use and a lot of inappropriate handling. The Deskstars don't mind.
Very unfortunately, HGST has apparently scaled back Deskstar sales and development significantly since the acquisition. I guess it has to do with WD selling off some of HGST's 3.5" assets to Toshiba in order to appease competition authorities. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10057519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10057519
- cm2187 11y agoPlus the Deskstars were compatible with hardware RAID.
- frik 11y agoYet: "In May 2012, WD divested to Toshiba assets that enabled Toshiba to manufacture and sell 3.5-inch hard drives for the desktop and consumer electronics markets to address the requirements of regulatory agencies." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HGST https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HGST
- currysausage 11y agoAdded link to an older comment of mine that addresses the HGST/Toshiba thing. To me, it looks like newer Toshiba 3.5" models are based on Fujitsu tech (if the enclosure design is any indication). Also, Toshiba might abandon their HDD business completely. [1] [1] http://seekingalpha.com/article/3827746-seagate-western-digital-soon-true-duopoly-hdds http://seekingalpha.com/article/3827746-seagate-western-digi...
- rasz_pl 11y agoFujitsu :( I worked at Fujitsu wholesale distributor around 1999, EVERY SINGLE drive sold between 1999-2001 died within 3 years (PB15/PB16). Those were great drives, cheap, silent, fast, and smelled great fresh from the factory due to pine sap rosin. Allegedly Cirrus Logic controller had a manufacturing defect and died due to heat. Myself I always suspected that very peculiar and strong smelling rosin flux. PCB was drenched in it, this type of flux is usually highly activated and requires cleaning, otherwise acid will eat solder joints and copper away, especially in humid and hot environments.
- JoshGlazebrook 11y agoThe 400GB Hitachi Deskstar in my old old Dell Desktop (Dimension 9100) so think early 2005, was still going strong before the power supply in that desktop died in 2013 or so. It had about 20 bad sectors according to SMART, but it still was chugging along.
- rpgmaker 11y agoConversely WD, particularly their RED drives, have gone to shit. Whatever HGST is doing they must be doing it in spite of WD management.
- tw04 11y agoThe reason HGST drives are still so reliable is because 4 years later the merger still hasn't closed. We can thank China for that. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/19/mofcom_says_yes_wd_hgst_merger/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/19/mofcom_says_yes_wd_h... Of course, the reality is China wanted a piece of WD, and used the merger as leverage to get it. I would expect by 2017, HGST drives are just as shit as WD. Which is unfortunate, because the Japanese designed one hell of a hard drive.
- currysausage 11y agoThank you for sharing this! I actually was naive enough to believe that WD would continue to let HGST operate as a seperate entity. There is probably some good news in the article though, for what it's worth: "At that time John Cyne ran WD. He since retired, with HGST bss Steve Milligan taking on his job." ... "In other news Western Digital has announced a new executive management team, and it looks almost like HGST executed a reverse take-over of Western Digital." ... "A person who was close to the corporate action in Western Digital and HGST said: 'All key positions are with HGST people; it's a reverse buyout. First HGST took Coyne's money to buy themselves (probably with a clause that Milligan is becoming CEO) and then they watched WD dismantling itself.'"
- sharpy 11y agoThat's an interesting cycle. I had one of the IBM Deskstar (aka. Deathstar for the high failure rate). IBM sold the HDD business to Hitachi, who sold it to WD. And now, Deskstars are as reliable as they come.
- rogerbinns 11y agoI had 4 of the 3 IBM "Deathstars" I bought fail. Yes, all 3 failed and then one of the replacements failed too.
- justin66 11y agoI had one fail, got a replacement, and with the replacement and its replacements continued that cycle until a new generation of drives came out, at which point I sold the stupid thing on eBay. It was unreal.