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Maxtor Corporation was an American computer
hard disk drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...
manufacturer. Founded in 1982, it was the third largest
hard disk drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...
manufacturer in the world before being purchased by Seagate in 2006. It was revived as a brand in 2016. Maxtor is a
portmanteau In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.
of maximum and storage.


History


Overview

In 1981, three former
IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
employees began searching for funding, and Maxtor was founded the following year. In 1983, Maxtor shipped its first product, the Maxtor XT-1140. In 1985, Maxtor filed its
initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...
and started trading on the
New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is the List of stock exchanges, largest stock excha ...
as "MXO." Maxtor bought hard drive manufacturer MiniScribe in 1990. Maxtor was getting close to bankruptcy in 1992 and closed its engineering operations in
San Jose, California San Jose, officially the City of San José ( ; ), is a cultural, commercial, and political center within Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. With a city population of 997,368 and a metropolitan area population of 1.95 million, it is ...
, in 1993. In 1996, Maxtor introduced its DiamondMax line of hard drives with DSP-based architecture. In 2000, Maxtor acquired
Quantum In physics, a quantum (: quanta) is the minimum amount of any physical entity (physical property) involved in an interaction. The fundamental notion that a property can be "quantized" is referred to as "the hypothesis of quantization". This me ...
's hard drive division, which gave Maxtor the ATA/133 hard drive interface and helped Maxtor revive its server hard drive market. In 2006, Maxtor was acquired by Seagate.


Early financing

The Maxtor founders, James McCoy, Jack Swartz, and Raymond Niedzwiecki—graduates of the
San Jose State University San José State University (San Jose State or SJSU) is a Public university, public research university in San Jose, California. Established in 1857, SJSU is the List of oldest schools in California, oldest public university on the West Coast of ...
School of Engineering and former employees of IBM—began the search for funding in 1981. In early 1982, B.J. Cassin and Chuck Hazel (Bay Partners) provided the initial $3 million funding and the company officially began operations on July 1, 1982. In February 1983, it shipped its first product to Convergent Technology and immediately received an additional $5.5 million in its second round of funding. The company also began negotiations with the EDB (
Economic Development Board The Economic Development Board (EDB) is a statutory board under the Ministry of Trade and Industry of the government of Singapore that plans and executes strategies to sustain Singapore as a leading global hub for business and investment. H ...
) of Singapore for favorable terms before committing to Singapore as its offshore manufacturing location. The DBS ( Development Bank of Singapore) agreed to provide financing to help grow the company in Singapore. In 1983, the company established a liaison and
procurement Procurement is the process of locating and agreeing to terms and purchasing goods, services, or other works from an external source, often with the use of a tendering or competitive bidding process. The term may also refer to a contractual ...
office in Tokyo, headed by Tatsuya Yamamoto. Maxtor's product architecture used eight disks; 15 surfaces recorded data and the final surface was where the servo track information was located. The company developed its own spindle motor, which was fitted within the casting containing the disks. This was a major departure as the spindle motor was usually mounted external to the disks. The first product was designed to provide 190 MB of storage, but delays in getting magnetic heads to the Maxtor design resulted in the company taking what was available, and the first drive—the XT-1140—was shipped with a capacity of only 140 MB. The company received an additional round of financing of approximately $37 million in 1984 before going public in 1986, with
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as the prime
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.


Expansion

In December 1986, Maxtor acquired U.S. Design Corporation, a loss-making manufacturer of data storage subsystems for microcomputers, for $16.1 million in a stock swap. The acquisition was finalized in January 1987. In June 1987, Maxtor purchased Storage Dimensions, a maker of high-performance, high-capacity HDD subsystems for the
IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the List of IBM Personal Computer models, IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible ''de facto'' standard. Released on ...
(which chiefly made use of Maxtor's own drives), for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition was a success story for Maxtor, and the subsidiary had grown to generate $80 million in sales by 1992. That year, Maxtor sold off Storage Dimensions to private investors. In 1990, Maxtor entered the mass market with its purchase of the assets (but not the liabilities) of bankrupt MiniScribe in
Longmont, Colorado Longmont is a home rule municipality located in Boulder and Weld counties, Colorado, United States. Its population was 98,885 . Longmont is located northeast of the county seat of Boulder. It is named after Longs Peak, a prominent mountain th ...
. The transition was a tough one as the early products of this union (notably the 7120AT 3.5-inch 120 MB drive) had many quality and design problems. Later products managed to sell well despite the initial problems. In 1996, the company completely redesigned its hard drive product line by introducing its DiamondMax series with a
Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American multinational semiconductor company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It is one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide based on sales volume. The company's focus is on developing analog ...
digital signal processor A digital signal processor (DSP) is a specialized microprocessor chip, with its architecture optimized for the operational needs of digital signal processing. DSPs are fabricated on metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) integrated circuit chips. ...
.


Financial troubles

After nine years of development, the original XT-series of drives had achieved a capacity of 1 GB. Maxtor sold the rights to the series to Sequel of
Santa Clara, California Santa Clara ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for "Clare of Assisi, Saint Clare") is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The city's population was 127,647 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of cities and towns i ...
in the mid-1990s, and the company exited the server drive market. Sequel, a spin-off of
Unisys Unisys Corporation is a global technology solutions company founded in 1986 and headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. The company provides cloud, AI, digital workplace, logistics, and enterprise computing services. History Founding Unis ...
, was not a disk drive manufacturer; rather, they specialized in refurbishing drives for the existing customer base. Teetering on the brink of bankruptcy in 1992, Maxtor's exit from the high-capacity 5.25-inch SCSI market temporarily left a product void in the industry. Around this time,
SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices, best known for its use with storage devices such as hard disk drives. SCSI was introduced ...
versions of the 7000 series drives were also discontinued, and all engineering operations in San Jose were shut down in late 1993, leaving only the former MiniScribe design engineering staff. After turnover in the executive staff, Maxtor decided it had made a mistake, and when Maxtor moved its headquarters to
Milpitas, California Milpitas (Spanish for or little cornfields) is a city in Santa Clara County, California, part of Silicon Valley and the broader San Francisco Bay Area. Located on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay, it is bordered by San Jose, California, S ...
, it gradually began to rebuild its engineering staff.


Acquisition of the Quantum hard drive division

In late 2000, Maxtor acquired the hard drive business of
Quantum In physics, a quantum (: quanta) is the minimum amount of any physical entity (physical property) involved in an interaction. The fundamental notion that a property can be "quantized" is referred to as "the hypothesis of quantization". This me ...
. The merger, which was completed on April 1, 2001, made Maxtor larger than its rivals, notably Seagate, and returned it to the server hard drive market and also implemented the ATA/133 interface into its hard drives.


Focus on external drives

Like many other hard drive manufacturers, Maxtor had been expanding in recent years into the external hard drive market. Its ''Maxtor One-Touch II'' external hard drive was marketed as convenient storage for the home user. Maxtor entered and became dominant in consumer business as result of a marketing strategy for the OneTouch line. The OneTouch is a high-capacity (500 GB to 1 TB) USB drive with a single-press button to back up and mirror the computer's hard drive. The line became the best-selling consumer device in the computer segment with several million devices distributed globally. Maxtor had initially made efforts to get into the 2.5-inch hard drive market, but in the beginning of 2005, new management made the surprising decision to discontinue development in this field. This was considered by many industry watchers to be a particularly peculiar move, since the market for such hard drives (mainly
notebook computer A notebook computer or notebook is, historically, a laptop whose length and width approximate that of letter paper (). The term ''notebook'' was coined to describe slab-like portable computers that had a letter-paper footprint, such as Epson's ...
s and
MP3 player A portable media player (PMP) or digital audio player (DAP) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. Normally they refer to small, battery-powered devices ...
s) was already experiencing rapid growth, with no signs of slowing down in the foreseeable future.


Acquisition by Seagate

In a deal worth nearly US$2 billion, Maxtor was acquired by its rival Seagate in 2006. The Maxtor brand was revived by Seagate in later 2016.


Competitors

*
Adaptec Adaptec, Inc., was a computer storage company and remains a brand for computer storage products. The company was an independent firm from 1981 to 2010, at which point it was acquired by PMC-Sierra, which itself was later acquired by Microsemi, ...
* Fabrik Inc. *
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies HGST, Inc. (Hitachi Global Storage Technologies) was a manufacturer of hard disk drives, solid-state drives, and external storage products and services. It was initially a subsidiary of Hitachi, formed through its acquisition of IBM's disk driv ...
* Iomega *
Samsung Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...
*
Western Digital Western Digital Corporation is an American data storage company headquartered in San Jose, California. Established in 1970, the company is one of the world's largest manufacturers of hard disk drives (HDDs). History 1970s Western Digital ...


References


External links


Official website
{{Seagate Technology Seagate Technology 1982 establishments in California 2006 disestablishments in California 2006 mergers and acquisitions Companies based in Milpitas, California Computer companies established in 1982 Computer companies disestablished in 2006 Computer storage companies Defunct companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Defunct computer companies based in California Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Manufacturing companies established in 1982 Manufacturing companies disestablished in 2006 Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Technology companies established in 1982 Technology companies disestablished in 2006 Companies formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange 1980s initial public offerings