Below are simple and straighforward information summarize by me which I think hard disk drive industry could be having hard time in future. The passages below doesn't recommend any buy or sell of any stocks in hard disk drive industry in Malaysia and around the globe. Happy Reading!The technological resources and know-how required for modern drive development and production mean that as of 2009, virtually all of the world's HDDs are manufactured by just five large companies: Seagate, Western Digital, Hitachi (which owns the former disk manufacturing division of IBM), Samsung, and Toshiba.
Dozens of former HDD manufacturers have gone out of business, merged, or closed their HDD divisions; as capacities and demand for products increased, profits became hard to find, and the market underwent significant consolidation in the late 1980s and late 1990s. The first notable casualty of the business in the PC era was Computer Memories Inc. or CMI; after an incident with faulty 20 MB AT disks in 1985 CMI's reputation never recovered, and they exited the HDD business in 1987. Another notable failure was MiniScribe, who went bankrupt in 1990 after it was found that they had engaged in accounting fraud and inflated sales numbers for several years. Many other smaller companies (like Kalok, Microscience, LaPine, Areal, Priam and PrairieTek) also did not survive the shakeout, and had disappeared by 1993; Micropolis was able to hold on until 1997, and JTS, a relative latecomer to the scene, lasted only a few years and was gone by 1999, after attempting to manufacture HDDs in India
The outlook for 2010 going forward seems tough as hard disk drive is having a huge competition as people are switching from Solid State Drive.
Solid-state drive (SSD) technology has been marketed to the military and niche industrial markets since the mid-1990s.
CompactFlash card used as SSDAlong with the emerging enterprise market, SSDs have been appearing in ultra-mobile PCs and a few lightweight laptop systems, adding significantly to the price of the laptop, depending on the capacity, form factor and transfer speeds. As of 2008 some manufacturers have begun shipping affordable, fast, energy-efficient drives priced at $350 to computer manufacturers.For low-end applications, a USB flash drive may be obtained for $10 to $100 or so, depending on capacity, or a CompactFlash card may be paired with a CF-to-IDE or CF-to-SATA converter at a similar cost. Either of these requires that write-cycle endurance issues be managed, either by not storing frequently written files on the drive, or by using a Flash file system. Standard CompactFlash cards usually have write speeds of 7 to 15 megabytes per second while the more expensive upmarket cards claim speeds of up to 40 MB/s.
Future possibility of SDD replacing Hard disk drive Is HUGE. This could drive out the business of hdd maker in the future.
Versions of Windows prior to Windows 7 are optimized for hard disk drives rather than SSDs. Windows Vista includes ReadyBoost to exploit characteristics of USB-connected flash devices. Windows 7 is optimized for SSDs as well as for hard disks. It includes support for the TRIM command.
Microsoft's exFAT file system is optimized for SSDs. According to Microsoft, "The exFAT file system driver adds increased compatibility with flash media. This includes the following capabilities: Alignment of file system metadata on optimal write boundaries of the device; Alignment of the cluster heap on optimal write boundaries of the device. Support for the new file system is included with Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows 7 and is available as an optional update for Windows XP.
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