If you're one of those people who prefer Seagate to Maxtor - or vice versa - then you'd better stock up on hard drives before this acquisition is completed next summer ;-)

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/051221/seagate_maxtor.html?.v=8

Scotts Valley-based Seagate, the world's largest disk-drive maker, hopes the move will strengthen its position in an arena where the players are fighting not only each other but also with a competing storage medium -- flash memory

Damn! I'm a Maxtor man!

I'm for neither, but I had a Maxtor drive fail on me a few months after the measly one year warranty ran out, so I prefer to purchase Seagates now, since they carry five year warranties. I don't know if Seagate hard drives are any more reliable than Maxtors, but should the Seagates fail within five years of purchase at least I won't be stuck with the cost of replacement.

That said, I'm sorry to see Maxtor purchased by Seagate simply from the aspect that there will now be less competition.

I had a maxtor fail to, but it was one of those 3 year warranties, so it was covered, but have only bought seagate since then.