Talk:List of defunct hard disk manufacturers

I created this article in the hope that ex-employees will document the history of these companies before they are long forgotten. Dyl 16:19, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

Old Missing Drive Posts
Back in the 1980's I worked on Harris and ITEL disk drives - consider adding? Definitely keep this article. Dandabald (talk) 15:09, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

DMA Systems, early 1980s, first product was 'Micromagnum 5+5', fixed+removable cartridge. Later products were 10? removable only. Those sizes are all megabytes! Gone a few years later. HTH. 58.164.161.101 (talk) 12:57, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Only harddisks - or also "removable drives"? Then Nomaï and Ricoh (with it's RH5500) are missing ... --ProloSozz (talk) 20:20, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Prior to Memorex acquisition Prior to RCA acquisition
 * Missing
 * Burroughs
 * General Electric
 * Honeywell
 * Itel
 * Newbury Data — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.209.176.90 (talk) 16:17, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
 * RCA
 * Scientific Data Systems
 * UNIVAC


 * Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 18:17, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

In 1988, I worked in the Custom Products department for a computer manufacturer called Sequent. We OEM'd 1GB disk drives from Control Data Corporation and installed them at a customer site. So Control Data Corporation belongs in the list. Added by 50.39.161.70 12 May 2024
 * Good point, CDC was there as Magnetics Peripherals which was the name of its subsidiary, later publicly known as Imprimis, so I fixed it. Tom94022 (talk) 05:56, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

History charts

 * Very good! But the diagram cannot be updated quickly. I have made some ASCII charts which can be updated as the years roll by (see the "future" acquistions at the bottom!)-Polytope4d (talk) 06:51, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

When did they start?
It would be nice to have a date when the companies entered the market as well.--78.48.142.205 (talk) 06:53, 21 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Not a bad idea. If you didn't already know, we do have history of hard disk drives.  --Juventas (talk) 02:10, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

The Future
What will happen next? WD acquires Toshiba in 2015, Seagate acquires WD in 2020. Seagate goes bankrupt by 2025. End of PC Industry. (Sorry!)-59.95.25.181 (talk) 05:44, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Rahm Rotationals and Tamir Tech
Neither Rahm nor Tamir are listed in any Disk/Trend report from 1990 thru 1999 so it is unlikely either company every made an HDD. Whomever keeps trying to add them needs to have a reliable source or stop wasting our time. Tom94022 (talk)


 * While I agree with the removal (I too could not find Rahm Rotationals and Tamir Tech being mentioned anywhere, except for in various pages which are clearly based on this Wikipedia article), we should not rule out the possibilities of almost unknown companies, for example from Eastern Europe before the end of the Cold War. I'm mentioning this, as "Tamir" does not sound like a Western name to me, and I just stumbled upon another "unknown" former harddisk manufacturer from Bulgaria (see other thread)...
 * For the records, so far Rahm Rotationals and Tamir Tech were added five times to this article (apparently always by the same dynamic IP user located in California, who in 2007 claimed to have worked for "RR" - if so, s/he could certainly provide more details about that company which could than be verified by others):
 * 2013-09-26T08:20:40‎ 72.87.249.50
 * 2012-07-04T16:31:05‎ 72.87.249.50
 * 2007-12-13T06:19:00‎ 66.253.89.70 Interesting edit summary: "I worked for RR!"
 * 2007-11-21T18:28:04‎ 66.253.89.66
 * 2006-12-31T00:19:38‎ 64.166.194.90
 * One edit is particularly strange, as it changed the years of bankruptcy or merger from 1984/1985 to 1994/1995 after half a year:
 * I encourage that IP to join the discussion here. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 14:44, 26 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Jim Porter (died 2012) of Disk/Trend annually traveled the world visiting most if not all disk drive companies from the 1970s until 1999 and published his analyses of the industry in a series of Disk/Trend reports. The absence of any mention of a company in any report is a strong reliable source that a company did not manufacture a disk drive. At one time he maintained a definitive list of defunct disk drive companies on his website, unfortunately now defunct. Tom94022 (talk) 17:03, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
 * This is the newest version of Jim Porter's list I could find (1999-06-14):
 * http://web.archive.org/web/20120308060524/http://www.disktrend.com/pdf/portrpkg.pdf from
 * http://web.archive.org/web/20120308060524/http://www.disktrend.com/dtspecal.htm and
 * http://www.magneticdiskheritagecenter.org/100th/Progress/Porter/jimporter.htm
 * Are you aware of a newer version of the list (for tracability, excluding lists taken over by other maintainers like Jean-Jacques Maleval, which were also based on Porter's list originally)?
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 21:50, 26 September 2013 (UTC)


 * The 1999 version is alone at http://www.magneticdiskheritagecenter.org/100th/Progress/Porter/Slide6.pdf I have a June 1, 2008 version in my files which is probably his last. I also have many of his reports in machine readable form so I can search for a name which may have been omitted from his list, e.g. ISOT  Tom94022 (talk) 07:18, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Note his list is all disk drive manufacturers and is not limited to HDD. Tom94022 (talk) 07:20, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Can you upload that list somewhere so that we can reference it in the article? Or can you provide an ASCII transscription here? While there may be newer lists maintained by others, given Porter's high reputability, I think, it would be of historic interest to have his last list available for reference, also to compare it with newer lists.
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 23:21, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Bulgarian ISOT / ЦЗОМ harddisk drive
Hi, I found another manufacturer of harddisk drives not listed yet:

A harddisk drive named CM 5508 was manufactured in Bulgaria by a company named ISOT, possibly in 1989 (based on its serial number). For photos of this drive and label see:

http://cgi.ebay.com/search.dll?ViewItem&item=221283263970

According to the Russian Iskra-1030 and Italian Iskra-1030 articles, this was a 10 MB drive, whereas the seller advertises it as 20 MB drive (and our Iskra-1030 article suggests this as well).

A very similar drive (same logo and drive name, but different company label: ЦЗОМ) can be found here as well (apparently from a Bulgarian university's computer museum):

http://hardwarebg.com/forum/showthread.php/161373

Greetings --Matthiaspaul (talk) 11:11, 26 September 2013 (UTC)


 * ISOT is listed in a number of Disk/Trend Reports on both Rigid Disk Drives and FDDs. I recall Jim Porter talking about visiting them in Bulgaria along with visits to other firms behind the "iron curtain".  Why didn't u just add it to our list? Tom94022 (talk) 17:09, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Great. I thought it would be better to first wait for comments (like your's) given that the references given are hardly ideal (an ebay auction and a forum post), although they clearly demonstrate the drive's and manufacturer's existance.
 * I have invited our Russian and Estonian fellows to join the discussion, if they know anything more about this drive or manufacturer ( and ).
 * Since you seem to have archived those Disk/Trend reports, they would certainly be useful as references as well. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 18:25, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

ЦЗОМ does not appear in Disk/Trend in either its cryllic or roman form (CZOM). The drive found is pretty clearly a Seagate ST506 (note the many identical features) so it is likely the ЦЗОМ is a re-branded Seagate (perhaps getting around export restrictions/). Absent any second confirming source I am going to remove it from the list. Tom94022 (talk) 16:12, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
 * It's ИЗОТ, actually. shattered (talk) 17:55, 27 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks, according to at least one translator it is IZOT in a roman alphabet which is probably ISOT. Which means I need to clean up the IZOT reference.  Tom94022 (talk) 23:29, 27 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Wow, thanks for correcting that. So, the stylized "ИЗОТ" logo is a form of hand-written Cyrillic. Do you have any idea what the abbreviation ИЗОТ or ISOT stood for? --Matthiaspaul (talk) 23:17, 2 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Regarding the ИЗОТ/ISOT CM 5508 being a relabelled Seagate ST506, I doubt that. However, it might be a close clone of the Seagate. Mind that they also cloned various microprocessors, chipsets and computers downto the details (but without the permission of the original developers). --Matthiaspaul (talk) 23:17, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Correct names is ISOT and ИЗОТ. Both names used on HDD labels.
 * There other models of HDD by ИЗОТ (ЕС5300, СМ5508, СМ5509). All - close clones of Seagate. - http://oldpc.su/articles/hdd/hdd.html Dk spb (talk) 11:18, 2 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Another remark: The seller of the CM 5508 in the above mentioned ebay auction gave me his written permission to reuse his auction photos in Wikipedia. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 23:17, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

First link is dead, rendering almost all content on this page unsourced.
Don't know what proper procedure to handle that is but I just wanted to mention for someone who cares enough to fix it.

Also, I saw Samsung on the list, and other sources to back this, but there are many options for sale still, and they just announced this:http://www.zdnet.com/article/ces-2015-samsung-unveils-tiny-ssd-that-packs-1tb/

So maybe they made a new hdd division? Or is Seagate still slapping Samsungs name on some of their HDD's as part of the deal? Can it still be considered defunct if there are new hard drives with the Samsung name on it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.112.131.2 (talk) 19:27, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
 * The fact that a link gets broken does not make the contents unsourced. Wikipedia depends on the existance of sources, either in the past or presently, not that sources are available online. Our normal procedure is to check if the contents can be sourced elsewhere or if the reference's contents is archived somewhere. Then the reference gets updated accordingly. We never remove formally valid references (or contents) just because links no longer work.
 * Having said this, thanks for the hint, I just located the reference in the internet archive and updated the link in the reference accordingly.
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 18:54, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Removing Friden and Calux
For consistency, I removed Friden since they never manufactured a disk drive in the sense that it shipped. There are others that attempted to develop products but died or were acquired before shipment and they are not listed; best example CoData which became Conner.

I removed Calux since there is no reliable source. Any oral history needs to be validated since it is the current recollections of events many years in the past and subject to recollection error. I did do a fair bit of searching and can find no mention of Calux. Tom94022 (talk) 23:09, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Is This Article Encyclopedic - Delete?
Is there any value to maintianing a long list of known defunct HDD manufacturers - what about the unknowns? The article seems particularly un-encyclopedic, perhaps rising to WP:OR. We have reliable sources on companies that manufactured HDDs including Porter's list, TheRef - Hard Drives, a comprehensive directory of hard drives compiled between 1989 and 2000, and of course McKendrik. It seems to me we can delete this article and move its substance to the history of HDDs article. By substance I mean: One short paragraph seems more than enough. BTW I have three or four more names to add, but why? I suggest deleting the article and moving its substance into the Manurfacturing History section of the History of hard disk drives article where much of the substance already resides. Tom94022 (talk) 21:36, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Started by IBM
 * 4 companies by 1964 - source Hess
 * Peaked at 85 - source CHM
 * several hundred entered and left - sources McKendrik, Porter, MFarris
 * 3 left, showing the bubble chart

FWIW a quick count of TheRef - Hard Drives gives 54 HDD manufacturers not in this article. Who knows how many more may exist? This is original research and not appropriate for Wikipedia. Tom94022 (talk) 22:10, 2 April 2017 (UTC)


 * I've now updated the Manurfacturing History section of the History of hard disk drives article and believe this article is a candidate for immediate deletion since it is incomplete OR. However, before I invoke that process I would like to hear from other editors particularly the major previous contributors . Tom94022 (talk) 00:56, 7 April 2017 (UTC)


 * I was in the process of removing the PROD tag when I saw that an IP had already removed it.
 * I can't follow why this article should be deleted after quite some work has been put into it already. There's certainly much room for further improvement, but researching the topic and obtaining references is a process of years, not days.
 * Tom, you have at several times indicated that you are (or were) an insider to the hard disk industry and that you have access to many more documents. If so, why don't you spend more time on improving the article and bring by more references? There are still quite a few manufacturers missing.
 * Actually I would like to see the scope widened also to companies, who only did prototypes (if this can be reliably sourced), disk platters and head assemblies, removable disks, and OEM products (if the disks were labelled accordingly) - but not necessarily in one list or table. Of course, the descriptions need to specify the kind. Long-run, this could be put into a sortable table.
 * You mentioned that the article contains OR. I'm not aware of OR unless you mean the recent Calux thing (but that was your own speculation, not mine). Inaccuracies can be fixed.
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 01:51, 12 April 2017 (UTC)


 * " researching the topic and obtaining references is a process of years, not days" is inpermissible original research. What do you think Porter and Maleval did.  These external lists are better than the one we have and I see no reason to waste time and space trying to bring this list up to those external resources.  Furthermore copying or incorporating those sources into the list probably is a copyright violation.
 * As I recall Matthiaspaul added Callux from an unreliable source which I then removed after having to spend some time researching the possiblity before deleting it. It actually is an example of original research that was a mistake.  Tom94022 (talk) 06:18, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Everything in the article except for the list is redundant to Manurfacturing History section of the History of hard disk drives article.

The list itself is at best incomplete at 97 companies; to be complete it should list between 221 and 292 companies, as follows: So the list should be between 211 and 292 companies as opposed to the 97 currently listed.
 * Maleval as of 2013 lists 221 Companies in HDD Manufacturing Since 1956.
 * From Porter we know that there were at most 287 defunct "disk drive" manufacturers (includes some optical only and FDD only) as of 1999 and I have an update of his as of 2008 which adds 5 more giving a maximum of 292.

If the list part of the article continues, then at some point it will state as a fact that XXX HDD manufacturers have become defunct. There is no reliable source for XXX other than the original research performed by the editors and therefore the list is not permitted in Wikipedia. On the other hand, using Porter and Maleval as reliable sources for XXX>200 or 221<=XXX<=287 along with pointers to their lists provides the reader with both the size of the decline and lists from reliable sources of all (or most) of the defunct HDD manufacturers.

If other editors really want to waste their time building this list then the simple thing to do is to merge Porter and Maleval and reconcile the differences which would either be HDD companies that departed after Porter's 1999 list or non-HDD companies on Porter's list. I think this would be original research and probably violate copyright restrictions, but it would be hours not years to achieve a reasonably accurate and complete list.

The choice to me is clear, get rid of the incomplete and possibly inaccurate list and point to reliable sources for such lists. Absent the list what remains has been (or can be) merged into the main article and this one can be deleted. Tom94022 (talk) 16:50, 12 April 2017 (UTC)


 * I created the original consolidation diagram back in 2011, but I haven't edited the article much. I felt that most of those small manufacturers and brands in the 1980's and 90's were frankly insignificant, but in 2000-2012 major established manufacturers were being shaken up, and that this was significant (hence the diagram).  So yes, I think this article should be deleted, and I will look at editing History of hard disk drives if need be.  --Juventas (talk) 00:42, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Can we have a separate "Listpedia" for all such lists which are important to some people. The Listpedia shall deal exclusively with lists, and may have links to Wikipedia articles. -Polytope4d (talk) 01:30, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Is Porter relevent to this article?
Porter is cited in this article but there is nothing in his 20 page speach that has any relevance to the article's subject. His slide six and discussion thereof is about all defunct disk drive companies, including optical and floppy companies. There is no attempt to distinguish between such companis so as such it is not relevent to this article which is clearly limited to defunct HDD manufacturers. Also his count is off, since there are more than 300 companies listed. Given we have an on the subject RS in Maleval and others there seems to me to be no reason to keep Porter in this article. Tom94022 (talk) 04:29, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

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New HDD manufacturers from Eastern Block

 * Robotron (VEB Robotron-Elektronik Zella-Mehlis, Meiningen, DDR)
 * НИИТОП (USSR)
 * НИИСЭМ (USSR, now Ukraine)
 * Скиф/Микротехника (USSR)
 * ПЗТМ (USSR, now Lithuania)
 * Прометей (USSR, now Ukraine)
 * Сура/НИИВТ (USSR)
 * КЭМЗ (USSR)
 * VolzhStor (USSR; PrairieTek->Unistor)

Photos and information - http://oldpc.su/articles/hdd/hdd.html Dk spb (talk) 11:41, 2 August 2022 (UTC)