SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - 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 (STX.N: Quote, Profile , Research), 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 Corp. (IBM.N: Quote, Profile , Research), inventor of the disk drive, in 1951 straight after graduating from the University of Redlands. But he left in 1969 for Memorex Corp., 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.

Source: http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews....echnologyNews-4