Behind the Price of HDDs Lies a 13-Year Cartel: Class Action Launched

In the United States, a new class action has been filed involving some of the world's leading producers of essential components for the operation of mechanical hard disks.

The lawsuit, presented in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accuses various suppliers linked to TDK Corporation and NHK Spring of participating in cartel practices, specifically colluding to artificially fix prices for over a decade.

According to the accusation, the alleged anti-competitive scheme was active from January 1, 2003, to December 31, 2016, directly affecting the production costs of hard disks and, consequently, the final prices paid by retailers and consumers. The lawsuit concerns not only HDDs purchased individually but also computers and systems that included traditional disk drives.

The significance of this matter stems particularly from the central role played by the components at the heart of the dispute. These are the thin mechanical arms that control the positioning of the read/write head over the rotating magnetic platters. The component must operate with extremely tight tolerances considering that modern HDDs work with very high magnetic densities and with heads suspended at microscopic distances from the surface of the disk.

From an industrial perspective, the production of these components requires highly specialized processes and skills that are difficult to replicate on a large scale. This strong production concentration represents one of the central elements of the accusatory framework. According to court documents, the components produced by the companies involved are present in approximately 97% of the hard disks distributed globally.

Although not directly mentioned in the lawsuit, companies like Seagate Technology, Western Digital, and Toshiba are indirectly involved, as their hard disks use components made by the suppliers targeted in the class action.

This case also represents the U.S. continuation of a similar proceeding launched in Canada in 2019. In that instance, the class action has already been certified by Canadian courts, and an appeal against this decision was dismissed in 2022, allowing the proceeding to continue. Although the U.S. legal context is separate, the accusations and the parties involved are substantively the same.

As of now, no date has been set for the trial in the United States, and there are no guarantees regarding the final outcome of the lawsuit. However, if the plaintiffs were to secure a favorable ruling, companies and users who purchased affected products between 2003 and 2016 could be entitled to financial compensation.

As is typical in U.S. class actions, potentially affected individuals automatically participate in the collective action unless they explicitly opt out. A dedicated portal has already been set up for those who wish to withdraw from the proceeding, with a deadline set for August 23, 2026.