Western Digital
Western Digital expanded its WD Blue NVMe family of budget SSDs this week with the introduction of the the WD Blue SN5000 series, an updated lineup of SSDs that, among other things, adds a 4 TB model. Being budget drives, the SN5000 series is not going to be a performance monster, but their combination of capacity, reliability, and relatively low price could make them popular both among casual buyers and among enthusiasts looking for relatively cheap bulk solid-state storage. Western Digital's WD Blue SN500 NVMe drives come in an M.2-2280 form-factor and are based around an in-house WD controller (the company rarely discloses their codenames these days). WD's controller is a 4 channel, DRAMless design, which is what we typically see for budget and mainstream...
Western Digital: Nearly All NAND Capacities Resumed Normal Operations
Western Digital and its manufacturing partner Toshiba Memory Co. (TMC) had managed to resume normal operation of almost all of their joint production lines at their Yokkaichi Operations campus...
31 by Anton Shilov on 8/1/2019Western Digital’s Ultrastar DC HC330: A 10 TB HDD for Enterprises w/ 40% Faster Writes
Western Digital has introduced its new top-of-the-range air-filled hard drive for enterprises that use storage servers, RAID arrays, and distributed storage. The Ultrastar DC HC330 HDD expands the capacities...
9 by Anton Shilov on 7/23/2019Western Digital Unveils IntelliFlash N5100: An Entry-Level All-Flash Storage System
Western Digital has introduced its most affordable NVMe all-flash storage array, the new IntelliFlash N5100. The device offers up to 92 TB of raw NAND flash using SN200 NVMe...
17 by Anton Shilov on 7/19/2019SanDisk’s Extreme Pro NVMe 3D SSD Gains Capacity: Up to 2 TB
Western Digital has quietly expanded its SanDisk Extreme Pro M.2 NVMe 3D SSD range with a 2 TB model. The drive offers performance on par with other models in...
7 by Anton Shilov on 7/12/2019Toshiba & WD NAND Production Hit By Power Outage: 6 Exabytes Lost
Toshiba Memory and Western Digital on Friday disclosed that an unexpected power outage in the Yokkaichi province in Japan on June 15 affected the manufacturing facilities that are jointly...
150 by Anton Shilov on 6/28/2019Toshiba Memory & Western Digital Finalize Fab K1 Investment Agreement
Toshiba Memory and Western Digital on Friday announced that they had finalized a formal agreement regarding a joint investment in the K1 manufacturing facility near Kitakami, Iwate Prefecture, Japan...
1 by Anton Shilov on 5/20/2019SanDisk's First 1 TB microSD Card Now Available
Marking a new high in microSD card capacities, Western Digital has started shipping its flagship SanDisk Extreme 1 TB microSDXC card. This is the company's (and industry's) first 1...
22 by Anton Shilov on 5/16/2019Shipments of PC Hard Drives Predicted to Drop By Nearly 50% in 2019
According to a new financial presentation from Nidec, a Japanese motor manufacturer who is responsible for around 85% of all HDD spindle motors, the company believes that shipments of...
79 by Anton Shilov on 5/3/2019Western Digital Starts Shipments of Client SSDs Based on 96-Layer BICS4 3D NAND
Western Digital has been continuing to ramp up production of its 96-layer BICS4 3D NAND, and the company has already been using this flash memory for various retail storage...
10 by Anton Shilov on 5/1/2019Retailers Begin Listing 4 TB WD Blue SSD
A number of Austrian retailers have recently begun to list Western Digital’s as-yet-unannounced WD Blue 4 TB SSD. The drive features a SATA 6 Gbps interface and performance you...
25 by Anton Shilov on 4/29/2019LaCie Portable SSD and WD My Passport SSD Capsule Review: 2TB SATA SSDs Behind a USB Bridge
The emergence of 3D TLC flash has enabled a new class of budget-friendly bus-powered external SSDs. Flash memory has also seen a recent drop in prices, and this has...
5 by Ganesh T S on 4/19/2019The Western Digital WD Blue SN500 SSD Review: Moving The Mainstream To NVMe
Western Digital's latest generation of WD Blue SSDs jumps from SATA to NVMe, making some sacrifices in the process but still meeting the everyday needs of the typical consumer.
51 by Billy Tallis on 4/19/2019Western Digital: Over Half of Data Center HDDs Will Use SMR by 2023
Western Digital said at OCP Global Summit last week that over half of hard drives for data centers will use shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology in 2023. At present...
33 by Anton Shilov on 3/19/2019New WD Blue SSD Switches To NVMe
In the process of assimilating SanDisk, Western Digital has been re-using their hard drive branding on consumer SSDs: WD Green, Blue and Black can refer to either mechanical hard...
15 by Billy Tallis on 3/14/2019Western Digital Develops Low-Latency Flash to Compete with Intel Optane
Western Digital is working on its own low-latency flash memory that will offer a higher performance and endurance when compared to conventional 3D NAND, ultimately designed to compete against...
22 by Anton Shilov on 3/12/2019Western Digital to Demo Dual-Actuator HDDs Next Week: Double the Actuators for Double the Perf
Western Digital has revealed this week that it will demonstrate its first dual-actuator hard drives at next week's OCP summit. Marking the company's first foray into multi-actuator drives, WD...
24 by Anton Shilov on 3/8/2019Micron and Western Digital Unveil 1 TB microSD Cards with A2
The evolution of 3D NAND memory had enabled storage device makers to offer rather unprecedented capacities. To that end, this week at Mobile World Congress, Micron and Western Digital...
18 by Anton Shilov on 2/26/2019512 GB of UFS 3.0 Storage: Western Digital iNAND MC EU511
Western Digital said that it has now completed development and started sampling its first UFS 3.0 storage solutions for ‘5G era’ smartphones. The new embedded flash drives (EFDs) provide...
6 by Anton Shilov on 2/25/2019Western Digital’s RISC-V "SweRV" Core Design Released For Free
Western Digital has published a register-transfer level (RTL) design abstraction of its in-house designed SweRV RISC-V core. The SweRV core is one of several RISC-V projects the company as...
14 by Anton Shilov on 2/15/2019HOYA Starts to Build Next-Gen HDD Glass Substrate Production Facility
HOYA Corp., an optical glass maker from Japan, announced this week that it had started construction of its new production facility for hard drive platter glass substrates. These substrates...
12 by Anton Shilov on 2/14/2019