History (1987): Western Digital Acquired Tandon’s HDD Ops for $80 Million

According to Scott Edward Watson, director, customer quality management, Western Digital Corp., Tandon Corp. owned MicroTek Storage prior to selling to WD.

MicroTek Storage president (Brent Nilsen) and Jugi Tandon were colleagues at Memorex previously. In his early years at Western Digital, Watson worked with many former MicroTek and Atasi employees including Stan Brown, who had been Atasi’s president and CEO. 

Western Digital’s San Jose, CA, office was MicroTek’s facility on San Ignacio Ave.  

Perhaps Tandon founded MicroTek and owned it as a subsidiary from the start.

Tandon acquired Atasi in 1987 for $5 million.

Atasi was a key player in the development of voice coil actuators for faster seek times. The company sued Seagate alleging they infringed on Atasi’s patented design of a voice coil 5.25″ HDD (U.S. patent 4,414,594). Seagate’s first HDDs used stepper motors then moved to the voice coil for higher performance HDD products. 

Reference:
Atasi’s Workers Move Into Tandon, Melding Of Two Firms Under Way

Western Digital acquired Tandon’s disk drive operations in 1987 for $80 million.