History 2000: Start-Up Toda Citron Technologies To Make One-Inch Disk Platters

Last April, a Californian start-up by the name of Toda Citron Technologies was founded to produce disk platters, solely for what the firm calls “microdisks,” i.e. the tiny platters for one-inch form factor HDD drives such as those made by IBM and Halo.

The originality of the venture lies in the use of high coercivity (up to 10,0000e), durable iron oxide film with the ability to record perpendicularly.

The company began with initial capital of $5 million, and set up shop in Milpitas, CA, where it expects to have production capacity of one million disks per month.

Toda Citron was founded by Mike Bergkamp, who is the president, and Keiichi Iwasaki, CFO and VP. The 2 men have a long history with HDDs, dating back to IBM. Bergkamp was also the CTO of disk maker StorMedia.

To develop and market this microdisk, the firm has signed a joint venture agreement with Toda Kogyo, a Japanese chemical company specialized in magnetic recording and the electro-photo printing market.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 152 on September 2000 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.

Note: Toda Citron was closed in 2002.