Monday, January 16th 2017
Seagate is Shutting Down One of Its Largest HDD Assembly Plants
The woes for the trusty old HDD continue, as Seagate, one of the world's biggest players on the HDD manufacturing field, has confirmed they are closing up one of their largest plants. The factory, located in Suzhou, China, is one of the company's largest HDD production epicenters, and its closure will significantly reduce the company's HDD output - a step in the company's purported "optimizations" towards reducing their HDD production capabilities from 55-60 million HDDs per quarter to around 35-40 million. Production and demand's age-old feud are once again taking their toll, as demand for spindle-drive technology subsides on the wake of SSDs increased performance and consecutive price declines, with most laptops now shipping with either SSD-based storage or cheaper, yet less power-hungry, eMMC solutions.
As a result, Seagate intends to lay off ~2200 employees, which go on to join the ~8,000 employees already laid-off in 2016 from different locations. It is still unclear what the company intends to do with the facility, which it obtained as part of Maxtor's assets, when it acquired the company in 2006, though a full-scale conversion to SSD manufacturing is unlikely any time soon, considering the amount of machinery that would have to be replaced on such a large factory.
65 Comments on Seagate is Shutting Down One of Its Largest HDD Assembly Plants
I had nothing but chinese seagate drives dying on me, everytime i had to buy a new one, had to ask for the non chinese ones...
Last I heard this on the news it had something to do China's tax penalty on Seagate for tax evasion. Seagate shelled out the cash to pay tax, but in return it closed down one of the factory and fired all 2000 of the employees there.
They should be fined and jailed for fraud.
Luckily, I didn't not pay for the original drive, but I was scammed out of shipping.
Guess she's okay with her job for now, seeing as a plant in China closed.
WD sends used drives for RMA replacements just like Seagate.
I do tend to buy enterprise sector drives though. My last Seagate was a Constellation.2
As for Seagate I had lost a backup plus. Submit an advance RMA and they next day a larger drive in brand new packaging to me. So far I have had better experience with Seagate than WD.
See my story here
www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/raw-read-errors-help.177976/
I had multiple support ticket in WD's supporting forum during that event. My forum posts in WD support got deleted and the admin over WD forum threatened me multiple times. The point is WD is just as shitty as seagate. From my personal experience WD is shittier than Seagate.
Because screw em, screw em both. Both have horrible RMA rates, both are equally unreliable for home use (not server use), both a slow and horrible for a modern day use in 2017, or 2016, or 2015... or 2014.
Thank goodness for the reduction in HDD production
Never had one fail on me yet, currently not using them, have them laying aside still with data on it.
Once my RMA drive arrived in Toronto, they sent it to CA, USA. Once it go there (Took 6 business days which is reasonable considering the distance), they sent a brand new HDD with UPS Express saver. It got to me in a day after it was shipped out. (Basically overnight shipping)
I call that service.
When my 500Gb made in china segate was doa, i went back to shop and bought a samsung F3, Samsung had some really good drives back then...
I am now wondering on upgrading some older hdd, might go for Wd reds, not sure how good the new seagate generation is
***knocks on wood***
:toast: