Disk drive pioneer Al Shugart dies

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Al Shugart, a pioneer in the computer disk drive industry and one of Silicon Valley's most colorful entrepreneurs, has died. He was 76.

The founder of Seagate Technology, the world's largest maker of computer disk drives, died on Tuesday following complications from heart surgery, said Julie Still, a family friend and Seagate spokeswoman.

Shugart, who once ran his dog Ernest as a candidate for Congress, was beloved at Seagate for his coach mentality in grooming young executives, despite a sometimes gruff manner, Seagate Chief Executive Bill Watkins said.

"He could be stubborn, but he gave people a lot of rope," said Watkins, who worked for Shugart after Seagate bought his employer Conner Peripherals, in a telephone interview. "He allowed you to run your organization."

After founding the company in 1979, Shugart led Seagate to the top of a notoriously rough and tumble industry. But a disagreement with the board in July 1998 led to his ouster, which he said at the time took him by complete surprise.

He started out with International Business Machines, inventor of the disk drive, in 1951 straight after graduating from the University of Redlands. But he left in 1969 for Memorex, and took with him about 200 engineers.

Several years later, he founded Shugart Associates, an early developer of the floppy disk drive, a device that helped usher in the personal computing era by allowing comparatively large amounts of data to be stored on a removable source.

"He really started a wave," said longtime disk drive analyst Jim Porter of Disk/Trend and who worked with Shugart at Memorex.

In 1974, Shugart's backers fired him and, almost broke, he moved to Santa Cruz, opened a bar and bought a salmon-fishing boat, according to BusinessWeek. "I had a tough time meeting my Porsche payments," he told the magazine in a profile in 1996.

Shugart, an avid surfer who had for years lived in Pebble Beach, California, is survived by his wife Rita, four daughters, one son, and seven grandchildren, Still said.

Watkins recalled he initially resisted working for Seagate after Conner was bought by its old rival.

But Watkins remembered changing his mind after a meeting with Shugart, who was wearing one of his trademark Hawaiian shirts, old polyester bell bottoms and sandals over red socks.

"We had a long conversation, none of it about disk drives, but about life and dogs and things he liked to talk about," he said. "I wanted the experience of working for Al Shugart."

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