Maxtor

Not to be confused with Matrox.

Maxtor Corporation

Type	Public (NYSE: MXO)
Fate	Acquired by Seagate Technology
Founded	1982
Headquarters	Maxtor Corporation 500 McCarthy Boulevard Milpitas, CA 95035 United States
Key people	James McCoy, Jack Swartz, and Raymond Niedzwiecki (founders)
Products	Hard disk drives
Website	www.maxtor.com

Maxtor Corporation, founded in 1982 and acquired by Seagate Technology in 2006, was an American manufacturer of computer hard disk drives, the third largest in the world immediately prior to acquisition. It now operates as a subsidiary of Seagate.^[1]

Maxtor targeted both the server and desktop market, concentrating on disk capacity more than disk speed for desktops.

History

Overview

• 1981 - Initial search for funding.
• 1983 - First product.
• 1985 - Initial public offering.
• 1990 - Acquired MiniScribe, another hard disk manufacturer.
• 1992 - Near bankruptcy.
• 1993 - Closed San Jose, California engineering operations.
• 1996 - Introduced DiamondMax line of hard disks with DSP-based architecture.
• 2000 - Purchased Quantum's hard disk line of business especially for their ATA133 IDE interface.
• 2006 - Acquired by Seagate.

Early financing

An early Maxtor hard drive (right) with a modern laptop hard drive and currency for size comparison

A Maxtor 60 GB hard drive

The Maxtor founders, James McCoy, Jack Swartz, and Raymond Niedzwiecki --- graduates of the San Jose State University 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. It shipped its first product in February 1983 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) 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 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, the motor usually being 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 drives were 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 1985, with Goldman Sachs as the prime underwriter.

MiniScribe acquisition

In 1990 Maxtor entered the mass market with its purchase of the assets (but not the liabilities) of bankrupt MiniScribe in Longmont, Colorado.^[2] The transition was a tough one, with the early products of this union (notably the 7120 3.5-inch 120 MB drive) having many quality and design problems. Later products managed to sell well despite the initial problems, and in 1996 the company completely redesigned its drive lines, introducing the Texas Instruments DSP-based DiamondMax series.

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, in the mid-1990s, thus exiting the server SCSI drive market. Sequel, a spin-off of Unisys, 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 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 having moved its headquarters to nearby Milpitas, gradually began rebuilding its Silicon Valley engineering staff.

Quantum hard drives acquisition

In 2000, Maxtor acquired the hard drive business of Quantum. The merger, which was completed on April 1, 2001, rendered Maxtor larger than its rivals, notably Seagate, and returned it to the server-SCSI market.^[3]

A Maxtor OneTouch III Mini Edition drive

As of 2006

Like many other hard-drive makers, Maxtor had been expanding in recent years into the external hard disk market. Its Maxtor One-Touch II personal hard drive is marketed as convenient external storage for the home user.

Maxtor had initially made efforts to get into the 2.5-inch hard disk market (notebook computer format) 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 computers and MP3 players) was already experiencing rapid growth, with no signs of slowing down in the foreseeable future.

In a deal worth US$1.9 billion, Maxtor was acquired by its rival Seagate in 2006. It is now used as a Seagate brand.

A series of storage solutions continues to be sold under the Maxtor brand name. The current Maxtor product line includes:

• Maxtor OneTouch 4
• Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus
• Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini
• Maxtor OneTouch 3 Turbo Edition
• Maxtor OneTouch 3 FW 800/FW 400/USB 2.0
• Maxtor OneTouch 3 FW 400/USB 2.0
• Maxtor OneTouch 3 USB 2.0
• Maxtor OneTouch 3 Mini Edition
• Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200
• Maxtor Shared Storage 2 1 TB
• Maxtor Shared Storage 2 320/500GB
• Maxtor Fusion Personal Web Server
• Maxtor Basics ATA/100 Hard Drive kit
• Maxtor Basics SATA 2/300 Hard Drive kit

Competitors

	Companies portal
	San Francisco Bay Area portal

• Hitachi Global Storage Technologies
• Western Digital
• Adaptec
• Fabrik Inc.
• Samsung
• Iomega

References

1. ^ Article from Seagate
2. ^ MiniScribe assets acquisition
3. ^ Article from CRN