Contents
1. Introduction
2. History of Hard Disk Drive (HDD) Industry
3 Definition of HDD
4. Structure of the Industry
5. Competitiveness
6. Challenges
7. Conclusion
1. Introduction
In this era, people own various types of electronics which contain hard disk drives.
Among these HDD (Hard Disk Drive) industries, Seagate is one of the worldwide leaders in manufacturing and marketing of hard disk drives. Seagate’s corporate office is located in Scotts Valley, California and employs nearly 52,000 people around the world. As one of employees in Seagate Company, I will explain in detail the nature of the HDD industry and its products.
2. History of HDD Industry
Behind the HDD (Hard Disk Drive) industry is an interesting and challenging history. In 24 years it progressed from a monstrosity with fifty two-foot diameter disks holding five Mbytes of data to today's drives measuring 3.5 inches wide and holding 2 Tera-Bytes.
The HDD market has expanded into consumer applications such as camcorders, cell phones, audio players, video players, video recorders, personal assistants and video game consoles.
Before the disk drive was created, there were magnetic drums. In the 1950s,
Engineering Research Associates of Minneapolis built the first commercial magnetic drum storage unit for the U.S. Navy, called ERA 110, which could store up to a million bits of data.
In 1956, IBM invented the first computer disk storage, the 305 RAMAC (Random
Access Method of Accounting and Control). It could store five Mbytes.
A few years later, IBM again invented the first disk drive with air bearing head, and in 1963 they introduced the removable disk pack drive.
In 1973 IBM shipped the model 3340 Winchester sealed hard disk drive, the predecessor of all current hard disk drives. The 3340 had two spindles each with a capacity of 30 MBytes, and the term "30/30 Winchester" was coined.
Hard disk drives were not associated with microcomputers until 1980, when Seagate introduced ST-506. This is consists of the first 5.25-inch hard disk.
Figure 2.1.The ST-506 by Seagate Technology
In 1980, IBM introduced the world's first Gigabyte-capacity disk drive called the IBM
3380. It was like a refrigerator size, weighed about 250 kg and had a price tag of
$40,000.
In 1993, Seagate introduced 7,200 RPM, UltraATA hard disk drive for Desktop
Computers: ST12250 Barracuda-2139 Megabytes, 3.5 inch disks in Figure2.2.
Figure 2.2 .The first 7,200 RPM, Ultra ATA hard disk drive.
Model - ST-506
Type - Hard Disk Drive
Capacity - 5MegaBytes
Cost -US $1500
Manufacturing Year- 1980
Manufacturer - Seagate Technology (Shugart
Technology)
3. Definition of HDD
Hard Disk Drive is a type of magnetic storage medium for data within a computer. It consists of a motor, spindle, platters, read/write heads, actuator, frame, air filter, and electronics circuit board. Its frame mounts the mechanical parts of the drive and a cover seals the parts within the frame. The sealed part of the drive is called as the
Hard Disk Assembly or HDA. The drive electronics consist of one or more printed circuit boards mounted on its bottom.
Fig.3 Detailed of Hard Disk
Disk’s read-write heads are glides across the surface of disk platters, lifted by an air cushion generated by moving air. The magnetic fields generated by the magnetic bits on the disk are converted to electrical signals by a read-write element located on the heads. Data recording is done by utilizing a magnetic field to change the polarity on the magnetic bits. In 2005, Seagate 400 GB drives used tunnelling MR (TMR) heads with 3 disks in a single drive. Later, Seagate introduced TMR heads which contain integrated microscopic heater coils. It could control the shape of the transducer region of the head.
A hard drive has one or more platters and each platter usually has a head on each of its sides. In modern drive, the platters are made of glass or ceramic. Non-metallic material does not possess the unfavourable thermal characteristics of the aluminium platters found in older drives. A layer of magnetic material is sputtered on the surface of the platters. Most of the platters have shiny, chrome-like surfaces.
The platters are mounted on the spindle and spinned by the drive motor. Most current
IDE hard disk drives spin at 5,400 up to 15,000 RPM.
The heads are Pico-sized electromagnets and etched into a wafer measuring a millimetre square. Information is stored on platters by sending pulses of magnetic fields from the drive electronics to a magnetic media.
There are two kinds of sectors on a hard disk. The first is a servo sector which is a lowest level. When a hard disk makes a special pattern written in a code on the surface of the platters called a Gray code. The Gray Code written in a wedge at the start of each embedded servo pattern on most drives. There are a fixed number of servo sectors per track. They are adjacent to one another. This pattern is permanent and cannot be changed by writing normal data to the drive.
4. Structure of the Industry
HDD manufacturer supplies to both consumers and commercial enterprises. The
Commercial enterprises include electronic consumer manufacturers, retailers and enduser.
One of the Hard Disk Drive Manufacturing Company’s flow chart is shown below. However, different industries have different method of organisation.
Enterprises Integrator Retailers Electronic -Manufacturers
Industry Organization Chart
Hard Disk Drive Manufacturing
Company
End-user
5. Competitiveness
The storage of the HDD continues to increase in capacity every year. The HDD’s
R&D Team continues to improve in higher data density with faster speed and better performance. Seagate’s HDD shipment was 50.3 million units in the first quarter of
2010, up 0.8% from 49.9 million units in the previous quarter. As per analysis, HDD manufacturers have the necessity to follow both rapid product innovation and continuous cost-cutting to ensure their survival. These ensures good production philosophy and efficiency are maintained.
6. Challenges
The Hard Disk Drive Industry must continue to innovate in solving technical challenges such as reducing the size of the drive while driving the growth in capacity and performance. The other policy which HDD managements must focus on is reducing their manufacturing cost, especially in the overheads. The research, engineering and top managements play a significant role in achieving these goals. At the same time, major breakthrough will be needed to overcome the current technological barriers. Fortunately, the HDD industry will have at least 6 to 10 years to address these challenges.
7. Conclusion
As I mentioned, the Hard Disk Drive industry will continue to evolve in the next decade. The HDD Industry must continue to maintain its price and performance advantage over the newer emerging technology of solid state drives to ensure its survival. Today, only five global hard drive manufacturers remain: Seagate, Western
Digital, Hitachi, Samsung and Toshiba. However, within the industry, there are also marked differences in performance between the major manufacturers, depending on their products, price and strategies.
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