that it has agreed to purchase Samsung's hard drive operations for about $1.4 billion. The deal also calls for Samsung, the world leader in NAND flash chip production, to continue supplying Seagate with flash memory technology, and for Seagate to supply HDD products for Samsung's PC, notebook and consumer electronics products.

The deal means that Seagate will be able to more easily step up development of enterprise-class SSDs and consumer-class hybrid drives, which marry mechanical hard drives with solid state technology.

The two companies also plan to expand an existing patent cross-licensing agreement and collaborate on development of enterprise storage systems. That means Seagate will be able to tightly integrate its SSDs with Samsung's NAND flash controller chip technology, according to John Rydning, research director for IDC's hard disk drive research arm,

To date, Seagate has been an industry follower when it comes to SSD technology.

The company only announced its first full enterprise-class SSD line a little more than a year ago. Seagate's current Pulsar SSD line is based on its own proprietary controller technology.