The technology sector is full of former high flyers that have come crashing down to earth. Disruptors often become the disruptees. That was pretty much the case for hard-drive specialist Seagate Technologies PLC (NASDAQ:STX).

During the PC boom and dotcom days, Seagate was one of the rising stars of the whole sector. You couldn’t buy a PC or device without one of its hard drives tucked inside. And then the switch to flash memory and solid-state storage devices sort of ended the ride for Seagate stock.

That is, until recently.

Seagate stock has enjoyed a torrid run over the last few months — driven by better earnings, guidance, deals and a hefty dose of blockchain. It turns out that STX isn’t ready to be called a tech dinosaur just yet. For investors — especially income seekers — this could be great news.

Big Run-Up at Seagate Stock

It’s no secret that flash memory and solid-state drives have taken the world by storm. These cheaper, smaller and more energy-efficient chips have pretty much replaced spinning magnetic disk hard drives in most devices. And with storage capacity for SSDs growing at exponential rates, they’ve only eaten more of traditional hard drive’s lunches over the last few years. That’s a major problem for Seagate and rival Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC).

As a result, both stocks have pretty much been in the doghouse over the last few years.

However, a 40% gain in January and a 54% return over the last six months doesn’t exactly sound like doghouse material or a relic that was left over from the dotcom days. It turns out, Seagate is quickly putting its past woes far behind it and moving forward on a number of bullish fronts.

For starters, the last few quarters for STX have been nothing but beautiful.

Believe it or not, enterprise customers still prefer hard disc drives over SSDs. Thanks to continued cloud computing adoption and massive data creation, demand for high capacity mass storage products has only increased in recent years. During the quarter, management highlighted growth and sales of Seagate’s 10-terabyte helium drive as a major contributor as well as increasing sales of its 12-terabyte helium drive. Those aren’t products that go into your family PC — they are strictly built for servers and data farms.

Over the last five years, STX has seen a 35% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in terms of storage shipments, with the bulk of that jump coming in the last two years or so. That’s all been driven by customers wanting and needing more storage for their app development, cloud and enterprise operations.

That’s been great for Seagate’s bottom line. The hard-drive maker managed to produce nearly $850 million in free cash flows during the second quarter alone.

More Ways for Seagate Stock To Win

But it’s not just rising demand for hard drives that is boosting Seagate’s fortunes. The firm is making some big-time deals was well.

It’s first big deal comes courtesy of a partnership with Toshiba. That long-term agreement will help it develop new NAND chips and expand into the solid-state drive world. While it might be too late to make a major splash, any market share it can snag will only benefit STX over the longer term.

And let’s not forget that Seagate continues to advance its own hard disc efforts. STX’s heat-assisted magnetic recording technology has continued to improve storage capacity immensely and the latest versions of its high capacity drives are set to ship at the end of the year/beginning of 2019. That should only boost its enterprise fortunes further.

Then there are Seagate’s recent forays into blockchain. The firm took a stake in Ripple Labs Inc.. Ripple is the company behind one of the most valuable cryptocurrency on the market. While it’s unclear if Seagate’s stake includes holdings in the cryptocurrency itself, the ownership of the blockchain firm could be more fruitful. After all, the data storage capacity needed to record blockchain’s ledger is quite large and the deal could give STX a front row seat to the trend.

Taking Seagate Stock for a Spin

The short end of it is that Seagate is quickly becoming a player on some of the hottest trends in tech — big data, the Internet of Things, mobile apps and blockchain. And yet, it’s still trading like it was a tech castaway. Even after the big run-up in price, STX shares are still paying a high 4.49% dividend and only a 25 price-earnings ratio. That’s pretty cheap when considering tech’s average and “growth moniker.”

For investors, this could be a huge steal.

With Seagate, you’re getting plenty of high growth potential for not that much in price. Enterprise demand for real storage solutions is only growing and solid-state drives can’t keep up with the need. For continuing to focus on this niche, Seagate is setting itself and its investors for plenty of future gains. Throw in the extra boost from blockchain and opportunity is even greater. The firm’s cash flows and big dividend are just the icing on the cake.

As of this writing, the author did not own any of the aforementioned securities.