Hard drive maker Seagate is now just a little bit bigger today. The company announced that it has completed its previously announced acquisition of the hard drive division that was previously owned by Samsung. Seagate paid Samsung $1.4 billion for its hard drive division which includes both cash as well as Seagate stock.

This move means that Seagate will continue to produce hard drives previously under Samsung's leadership. That includes Samsung's M8 line of 2.5-inch hard drives. As part of the agreement, Seagate will be providing hard drives for a number of Samsung's products including PCs, notebooks and other devices. A number of Samsung's Korean-based hard drive executives, managers and team members have now become Seagate team members under the acquisition and will work to develop hard drives for the mobile computing business.

Another hard drive maker, Western Digital, announced plans in March 2011 to acquire Hitachi Global Storage Technologies for $4.3 billion. Western Digital has yet to announce that the deal has officially closed. When and if that acquisition is final, there will only be three hard drive manufacturers in the entire world: Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba.

Neowin / Seagate