How to Build a Hard Drive: A Factory Tour

I am a sucker for a factory tour. I marvel with wide-eyed wonder as I watch how pieces and parts get created, assembled, and tested into something you can recognize and use. Whether it’s making beer or cars—sign me up. So, when Seagate Technology offered me a chance to tour their hard drive prototyping facility in Longmont, Colorado, I was powerless to resist. After all, I’d get to see how they prototype the process for building hard drives before they scale to full production. As a bonus, I also got to see their reliability lab and to talk with them about how they perform fault analysis on failed drives, but I’ll save those topics for a future post. For now, put on your lab coat and follow me to Longmont, the tour is starting.

Over the past 40 years, Longmont, Colorado has been home to multiple hard drive manufacturers. This accounts for the hard drive-related talent that lives in this pastoral community where such skills might otherwise be hard to find. Longmont has also come a long way from the brick shipping days of MiniScribe in the 80s to today’s ultra-sophisticated factories like the Seagate facility I have been invited to tour.

I arrive at the front desk with appointment confirmation in hand—you can’t just show up. I present appropriate credentials, electronically sign a non-disclosure agreement, get my picture taken, receive my badge—escort only—and wait for the host to arrive. I’m joined by my Backblaze colleague, Ariel, our senior director of supply chain, and a few minutes later our host arrives. Before we start, we get the rules: No pictures, in fact devices such as cell phones and tablets have to be put away. I’ll take notes, which I’ll do on my 3×5 Backblaze notepad.

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