Western Digital to Buy Hitachi's Hard Drive Sector

No pun intended on the title (hard drive, bad sectors--bad joke? I know).

Yesterday, Western Digital announced that it would be purchasing Hitachi's hard disk drive (HDD) business for approximately $4.3 billion (in a mixed purchase of both cash and stock). Hitachi would own around 10% of Western Digital's stock after the transaction. This would make Western Digital, already the biggest manufacturer of hard drives in the world--an even bigger hard drive manufacturing giant.

A hard disk drive read/write head and platter.
Source: academic.ru

Currently, Western Digital has a market share of around 31.0%, right above Seagate's market share of 29.7%. After the purchase, Western Digital's market share of the hard drive market will shoot up to a staggering 50% or higher, according to forecasts. However, this brings in the question of whether or not Western Digital will be potentially monopolizing the hard drive industry. Antitrust issues may prevail unless the deal is approved by authorities and not found to damage competition in the market.

However, both Western Digital and Hitachi have stated that they expected the deal to go smoothly and to finish by the third quarter this year. Upon breaking of the news, Western Digital's stock rose by a sharp 16% to $34.68. For a stock that has been down more than 11% for the past year, such a rise is more than welcome by stockholders.

The top 5 main hard disk drive manufacturers, which will be reduced to 4 after the transaction between Western Digital and Hitachi.
Source: IHS iSuppli and The Wall Street Journal

Now that the 5 main competitors (Western Digital, Seagate, Hitachi, Toshiba-Fujitsu, and Samsung) have been reduced to 4, what does this mean for the market as a whole? For one, the competition is probably going to heat up rather than getting reduced. With hard drive prices tumbling over the past decade and the advent of portable tablet computers which rely on static memory (see my SSD drive post), R&D may be the only way to lead a market already saturated with products offering nearly the same performance across the board.

It is clear that with this purchase, the future of hard disk drive costs, performance, and value will be altered significantly. Additionally, with a worldwide cap of neodymium by China (which controls harbors roughly 90% of the world's neodymium--a rare earth magnetic metal which is used in everything from hybrid vehicles to hard drives), new technology will almost become necessary in order to keep prices at bay.

Let's just hope that quality control remains the same across the board with all hard disk manufacturers as demand increases with more tablets, PCs, and laptops being manufactured and shipped around the world.

What is RAM and Why Do You Need It?

Did you ever use scrap paper in an exam? If so, you just might relate to your computer!

When searching for a new computer to purchase, you are likely to prioritize specifications. Processor speed, hard disk space, video card performance, blu-ray drives, screen resolution, and other specifications all factor into most computer purchases today.

A RAM Module being installed. Next to the RAM module you can see the heatsink and fan on top of the CPU (central processing unit). The CPU communicates often with the RAM, which is why they are near one another.

Source: data.sg

One of the most important specifications that is often sought after but not understood is RAM Memory (not technically called RAM Memory, since the acronym itself has the word memory in it). RAM, which stands for Random Access Memory, is a type of physical memory that is commonly found in modules inside desktop computers, laptops, smartphones, and all kinds of electronic devices (even your DVR and DVD/Blu-Ray Player).

We all know that hard disk space is used to store data. Documents, pictures, music, videos, and any other data gets stored as bytes onto our hard drive. When we shut down our computer, our data stays there, ready to be retrieved on a restart.

However, RAM acts quite differently from a hard drive's memory. The primary difference between RAM and hard drive memory is that RAM is temporary. Information that gets written and retrieved from RAM is wiped out when you shut down your computer, in contrast to a hard drive's memory which stores the information in-between boots.

So what exactly do we need RAM for? Think about an exam you took. Did you use scrap paper in this exam? If you did, do you remember why you found the scrap paper so helpful? It probably was useful because you stored temporary calculations in it (in two, three, four step problems and beyond). To calculate your final answer, you probably looked more at your scrap paper than the actual exam sheet.

After the exam is over, you probably ended up with a messy sheet of scrap paper, but landed a score of 100 on your exam. Well, RAM works the same way as your sheet of scrap paper!

A brief diagram showing how RAM fits into the entire computer system.

Source: technet.microsoft.com

See, when you start a program on your computer, your computer (specifically, your CPU or central processing unit as shown in the image above) gathers the files and information necessary to run that program. Some of this data is stored temporarily in the RAM module(s). When you work within the program (suppose you are using Microsoft Word), anything you are typing is actually being written onto your RAM--not your hard drive. It is actually when you save your document that the information is transferred from the RAM into the hard drive.

Why does the computer do this? The same reason why you used scrap paper in that exam. The computer needs a faster, more temporary solution for its own "calculations" before it can store the file or data that you need it to--this faster solution is RAM. Since RAM does not have any moving parts as compared to a hard disk drive, it is a much faster form of memory compared to a hard drive. And for a computer, it is this speed and temporary memory that is essential for giving the end-user a seamless experience when using a program.

And when you exit the program, the computer deletes the information from the RAM to free up space for other programs that may be executed--just like when you completed your exam and threw out your scrap paper, the computer does the same.

So the next time you're using a program (or 10 simultaneously in this day and age), remember, your computer is working hard to communicate, write, and retrieve data from RAM in order to give you a smoother experience (or maybe it just needs the sheet of scrap paper for that long-answer question we all hate, who knows!).

Three Useful Windows Shortcuts

I wanted to mention three useful Windows shortcuts in today's post. Some of these you may already know, some you may not. However, they are all very practical and useful, so read on!

Source: Popularlogistics.com

The first shortcut is a classic take on the CTRL + ALT + DEL shortcut to open up task manager. The original CTRL + ALT + DEL was made so that it would require two hands to execute the shortcut.

In newer versions of Windows, CTRL + ALT + DEL takes you to the user page instead of opening task manager.

Shortcut 1: To quickly open task manager, try CTRL + SHIFT + ESC on the left side of the keyboard. This saves time and opens up task manager as before.

The second shortcut is useful if you have a lot of windows open and simply want to view your desktop. In Windows 7, this can be done by clicking the little rectangle near the clock. However, a faster way of doing it is as follows:

Shortcut 2: To "minimize" all windows and show the desktop, do WINDOWS KEY + D. This will quickly show only your desktop and minimize all of the windows. Very useful if you multitask a lot.

The last shortcut is pretty common knowledge, but I will share it since not everyone may know. It is an easy way to browse between your open windows to choose which window(s) you want active.

Shortcut 3: Press and hold down the left ALT key while pressing the left TAB key to browse through your open windows. Keep pressing TAB until you get to the window you want to open, and then release both the ALT and TAB keys and the window will be active.

There you have it. Three simple but useful shortcuts for Windows!

Fragmentation and Solid State Drive Prominence

Ever threw your clothes around in the room, and regretted it when you came home and had to find that one piece of clothing you wanted to wear?

That's pretty much what your traditional hard drive has to go through every day when you use your computer. It happens because of file fragmentation. In order to retrieve information for a single file, that file may be broken into several "parts" which are stored on different parts of the hard drive. Once the hard disk spins enough times for the head to read all of the parts and "find" the file, you're probably wondering why your computer is getting slower.

Fragmentation is common on almost all applications. From databases to consumer computers. Defragmenting a computer is usually the first and most reliable solution to fix this solution. Think of defragmentation as if a maid always stayed in your room and kept your clothes organized (wouldn't we all love that?). The problem with defragmentation is that it usually takes a long time.

However, with Solid State Drives--which are quickly gaining prominence--defragmenting the drive takes much less time than a traditional hard drive. Since there are no moving discs in a Solid State Drive (think of it like a giant flash drive), the problem with the head "searching" for the missing parts no longer occurs. Technically, it does still occur, but with significantly less delay. In addition, SSDs are simply much faster with fragmentation than traditional hard drives, because of their non-moving spindles and memory modules.



Top: traditional hard drive. Bottom: Solid State Drive. Source: macperformanceguide.com

When SSDs first came out, they were very expensive with little capacity. Recently however, SSDs have finally been introduced into laptops as part of a standard configuration for some models. As SSDs gain more market share, we can all be guaranteed a smoother computer experience, as read times are significantly reduced with SSDs (near instantaneous program starts, boots, and other things we do every day).

Today, an average SSD costs more than the average hard drive. Is it worth the current price premium? I think it is. When SSD prices drop even further, the choice will be almost no choice at all as SSDs do nearly everything better than traditional hard drives.

Originally designed by IBM in 1954 (yes, 1954), the hard drive is old technology.

The good news is that I believe we are all seeing the transition of another obsolete medium for storing and retrieving data, being replaced with something significantly better in performance.

Who knows, maybe one day you can tell your kids: "Can you believe it? We used hard disks that actually spun inside our computers at your age."