Sale of IBM’s PC Division to Lenovo Won’t Affect Data
Recovery
ST. LOUIS, December 8, 2004 – On Tuesday, IBM announced the
sale of its personal computing business unit to Chinese manufacturer
Lenovo Group Ltd. Lenovo, formerly called Legend, will purchase
the IBM unit for $1.75 billion, a move that will also switch the
employer of almost 10,000 IBM employees.
One significant factor in IBM’s decision to sell the personal
computing unit was a reported increase in warranty expenses between
January 2003 and June 2004. An unusually high rate of problematic
components is most likely the culprit for this increase. Nathan
Wright of ESS Data Recovery (www.essdatarecovery.com) suggests that
hard drive failure may have contributed to these expenses. “We
see a fair amount of hard drives that come from IBM units, both
desktops and laptops. I wouldn’t say we get more IBM or Hitachi
drives than other brands, though. Fortunately for IBM’s customers,
the drives that come out of their computers tend to have a higher
success rate when it comes to recovering the customers’ data.”
IBM’s use of the IBM Travelstar and Desktop ended in June
of 2003 with the sale of IBM’s hard drive division to Hitachi
Global Storage. IBM has continued to use the Hitachi Ultrastar,
Deskstar, and Travelstar in its servers, desktop computers, and
laptops since the sale.
Hitachi and Lenovo established a partnership in June of 2004 to
develop storage solutions and services, primarily for the Chinese
IT market. Wright says to expect more of the same when Lenovo picks
up manufacturing of the former IBM personal computers. “I
would expect Lenovo to continue using Hitachi hard drives. If modifying
our data recovery techiniques becomes necessary, we will make the
changes.”
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