Facts

Seagate Minnesota Operations

 

Overview:    

Seagate (NYSE:STX) is the worldwide leader in the design, manufacturing and marketing of hard disc drives for Enterprise, PC and Consumer Electronics applications. The company is committed to delivering award-winning products, customer support and reliability, to meet the world’s growing demand for information storage. Seagate can be found around the globe and at www.seagate.com.

                                               

History:

Seagate Technology has been a part of the Twin Cities for 14 years, yet the Minnesota Operations actually have long-standing roots in the community. It began in the early ‘60s with Control Data. Then, in October 1989, Seagate purchased Control Data’s drive division (Imprimis). Since then Seagate has become a leading independent designer, manufacturer and distributor of data storage products and components for the computer systems and data technology industries.

 

Business Profile:  

Seagate Technology of Minnesota plays a significant role in addressing the technology needs of the business market and the latest, emerging consumer electronics market. Minnesota serves as a strategic hub of Seagate’s technology development efforts. The company’s most advanced research and development efforts as well as its prototype manufacturing are performed in Minnesota.

 

Recording Head Operations

The Recording Heads Operation, with worldwide manufacturing facilities, is headquartered in Bloomington, and is Seagate’s internal and principal supplier of recording heads. The division’s leading research and development capabilities continually push the technology envelope – allowing the company to design and develop industry-leading advanced read/write heads for disc drives and tape drives.

 

Head technology is the most precise, complex and dynamic technology in the computing industry; heads are no larger than a grain of coarse sand. Everyone who operates a computer relies upon this technology, as it is the head that writes, saves, erases, sends and receives data. This all happens very quickly—a drive writes hundreds of millions “bits” of data per second.

Product and Technology Development

Product and Technology Development, located in Shakopee, is home to advanced technology research and development, and the enterprise disc drive development center. Research and Development, which occurs within the Advanced Technology Integration group, is designed to bridge today’s products and operations with tomorrow’s technology. The lab’s employees focus on researching and developing technology that is two to five years away from “productization” and shipment to customers.

 

The enterprise drive center focuses on developing high performance and high capacity disc drives for business use, typically in large servers that store a company’s critical data, or for the storage needed by servers that run the Internet. At this operation, Seagate researches new technology, develops new products, builds and tests products and when the manufacturing process is stable, transfers the products to high volume manufacturing sites around the world.

 

Employment:

Seagate Minnesota employs more than 3,500 people, including 250 Ph.D.’s and 1,200 engineers, making Seagate one of the largest technology companies in Minnesota. Seagate is one of the top 65 companies in Minnesota.

 

Seagate’s employees have pioneered significant advances in both speed and storage capacity. Some of the industry’s firsts have been designed and developed in Minnesota including the 5,400 rpm, 7,200 rpm and 10,000 rpm disc drives as well as the industry’s leading-edge product, the 15,000 rpm disc drive. The 15,000 rpm drive is widely recognized as the world’s fastest drive.

 

Community Involvement:

            Minnesota not only benefits from Seagate’s payroll and employment,

but also from the firm’s direct community support. Seagate encourages its employees to participate in community organizations and events, many of which are financially supported by the corporation. In addition, Seagate strongly supports science and technology education, diversity, the United Way, economic development and human services. These and other areas of community interest receive donations of cash, grants, surplus computer hardware and office furnishings.

 

 

About Seagate’s Products:

Seagate Minnesota designs the Cheetah family of disc drives which, when it comes to disc drives, are the industry heavyweights. The Cheetah family of enterprise-class disc drives has the edge in performance and serves as the backbone of the Internet. The operation’s Cheetah 15,000-rpm disc drive performance is equivalent to a person reading the entire works of Shakespeare in less than .15 seconds.

 

Seagate’s drives are at work worldwide and are counted on in every conceivable application for their robustness and reliability. Enterprise drives can be found:

·        Handling ATM transactions

·        Handling storage on servers that run the Internet

·        Storing digital images at editing suites throughout the AV world

·        Behind the scenes of the Tonight Show with Jay Leno making last minute changes

·        Addressing the technical challenges of countless movies including Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Panic Room.

 

Interesting Facts:

·        Seagate Minnesota has 12 clean rooms that are 3,000 times cleaner than a typical household and 100 times cleaner than a hospital operating room

·        Seagate is the 12th ranked patent holder in Minnesota

·        Seagate’s Minnesota employees have been awarded 769 patents over the past ten years

·        Seagate’s Minnesota operations are ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certified

·        Seagate Minnesota has employees from over 65 countries

 

Disc Drive History:                                                1979               vs.       2003

·        Price of disc drive per megabyte          $300                           ½ cent

·        Speed of disc drive                                3,600 rpm                  15,000 rpm

·        Capacity of disc drive                             5 Megabytes1            180 Gigabytes2

 

1 Equivalent to storing 25 copies of Hamlet

2 Equivalent to storing a stack of text documents that is virtually three times the height of the Empire State Building

           

For More Information Contact:

Jill Hornbacher, Corporate Communications, (952) 402-2868

Jill.M.Hornbacher@seagate.com Rev. 1-03