Western Digital 102AA (2000)

2000: sea change

The exuberance and variety of the late 1990s gave way, little by little, to a more rational and practical but much less interesting industry in the new century.

Steps along the way included a proliferation of cheap, slow drives, the first subtle signs of a lowering of service and reliability standards in pursuit of lower costs, and most of all the demise of one of the truly great names in storage: Quantum was bought out by Maxtor. Now there were only only six mainstream makers left: Seagate, Maxtor, IBM, Western Digital, Samsung, and Fujitsu.