Hitachi, Seagate and WD to jointly develop HDD technology

Hitachi GST, Seagate Technology and Western Digital have agreed to form a group that will jointly conduct research and define a road map for hard disk drive technology. The group will end a long and heated debate about the next big leap in disk technology and is expected eventually to include all drive makers and their component vendors.

The three companies have already committed "multiple millions of dollars" to the new group, tentatively called the Storage Technology Alliance. The three U.S. companies have been hammering out details of the new group for months.

"By the end of the year we hope to have all the hard drive and component companies including semiconductors makers in line because the proposition is so compelling," said Mark Geenen, chairman of the International Disk Drive and Equipment Materials Association (IDEMA) which will manage the research group.