RECAP: Inside every traditional hard drive is a component most people never think about, but one that has to work with extraordinary precision. The suspension assembly, a thin mechanical arm that positions the read-write head, operates at incredibly tight tolerances as it hovers over spinning platters. It is a small part, but without it, disk drives would not function at all. That component is now at the center of a US class-action lawsuit that highlights how concentrated parts of the storage hardware supply chain are.
Filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, the lawsuit accuses major suspension assembly manufacturers of engaging in price-fixing over more than a decade. The defendants are grouped around two key players, TDK Corporation and NHK Spring, whose components are used across nearly the entire hard drive industry.
According to the complaint, suspension assemblies produced by these companies are found in about 97% of hard disk drives globally. That reach effectively ties the case to the broader HDD market, including drives sold by Seagate, Western Digital, and Toshiba. While those brands are not named in the lawsuit, their products rely on the same underlying components.
