Seagate Technology announced yesterday (22/4/2008) that they have now shipped their 1 billionth hard disk drive, the first manufacturer in the industry to do so.  This achievement has been 29 years in the making, however, Seagate anticipate that they can double this figure and ship their two billionth drive within 5 years, around the time they expect their closest rival to be shipping their billionth.

Read Seagate’s press release here.

With all the news headlines about SSD drives taking over the market within X years, and new memory technologies such as Racetrack being developed it is easy to forget just what a huge role the hard disk drive plays in the world in which we live. Indeed the spinning disk hard drive will be with us for many years to come.