Western Digital

Data storage requirements have kept increasing over the last several years. SSDs have taken over the role of the primary drive in most computing systems. However, when it comes to sheer bulk storage, hard drives (HDDs) continue to be the storage media of choice in areas dealing with large amounts of relatively cold data. Since the release of the last HDD guide, we have seen the announcement of 24TB CMR drives from both Seagate and Western Digital. The 22TB and lower capacity drives have also seen price reductions. Meanwhile consumer SSDs have seen a resurgence of their own, thanks to a recent (and temporary) bust in flash memory prices. Even with this, it's not enough to challenge large HDDs on a $/GB basis, but it's...

Western Digital Updates Red Pro Line with 16 and 18TB Capacity Points

Western Digital recently unveiled their first energy-assisted magnetic recording (EAMR) HDDs for the retail channel. Today, the company is taking advantage of the same hardware platform with some tweaks...

9 by Ganesh T S on 9/23/2020

Western Digital Launches Security Platform for Portable Storage with G-Technology's ArmorLock-Encrypted NVMe SSD

Data safety is of paramount importance for many enterprise use-cases, and in certain scenarios, for home consumers too. Portable storage devices have typically offered data protection in the form...

4 by Ganesh T S on 9/3/2020

Western Digital's USB 3.1 Gen 2 WD My Passport SSD Gets an NVMe Refresh

Western Digital's lineup of direct-attached storage (DAS) products targets a range of markets and form-factors. After the acquisition of HGST / G-Technology and SanDisk, the company now offers similar...

20 by Ganesh T S on 8/20/2020

The Next Step in SSD Evolution: NVMe Zoned Namespaces Explained

In June we saw an update to the NVMe standard. The update defines a software interface to assist in actually reading and writing to the drives in a way...

46 by Billy Tallis on 8/6/2020

Western Digital's 16TB and 18TB Gold Drives: EAMR HDDs Enter the Retail Channel

Western Digital made a number of announcements yesterday related to their enterprise hard-disk drives (HDD) product lines. While there was nothing unexpected in terms of the products being announced...

72 by Ganesh T S on 7/9/2020

Western Digital Announces Ultrastar DC SN840 Dual-Port NVMe SSD

Western Digital is introducing a new high-end enterprise NVMe SSD, the Ultrastar DC SN840, and a NVMe over Fabrics 2U JBOF using up to 24 of these SSDs. The Ultrastar...

25 by Billy Tallis on 6/24/2020

Dell & HPE Issue Updates to Fix 40K Hour Runtime Flaw in Enterprise SSDs

In a second SSD snafu in as many years, Dell and HPE have revealed that the two vendors have shipped enterprise drives with a critical firmware bug, one will...

51 by Anton Shilov on 3/27/2020

SanDisk Launches Max Endurance microSD Cards: 3 to 15 Years Warranty

In a world where NAND storage density, capacity, and low cost matter the most, key metrics that take a back seat include endurance and retention rates. For users who...

22 by Anton Shilov on 3/19/2020

Western Digital Introduces WD Gold Enterprise SSDs

On what would have been the first day of the Open Compute Project's annual Global Summit, Western Digital is bringing out a new line of enterprise SSDs. The WD...

20 by Billy Tallis on 3/4/2020

UFS 3.1 Storage Devices for Smartphones Unveiled by Kioxia & Western Digital

Less than a month after JEDEC published its UFS 3.1 specification, Kioxia and Western Digital have introduced their first UFS 3.1-compliant storage devices for smartphones. Samples of Kioxia’s UFS...

2 by Anton Shilov on 3/2/2020

The Road to 80 TB HDDs: Showa Denko Develops HAMR Platters for Hard Drives

Showa Denko K.K. (SDK) has unveiled the the company has finished the development of its next-generation heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) media for hard drives. The platters use all-new...

81 by Anton Shilov on 2/6/2020

Quantum to Acquire Western Digital’s ActiveScale Business

Quantum has announced that it had agreed to acquire ActiveScale object storage business from Western Digital. Western Digital’s ActiveScale cloud storage solutions are used to store unstructured data that...

9 by Anton Shilov on 2/5/2020

Western Digital Roadmap Updates: Energy Assisted Recording, Multi-Stage Actuators, Zoned Storage

Between CES at the beginning of the month, a series of presentations at Storage Field Day last week and a quarterly earnings report this week, we've heard from just...

115 by Billy Tallis on 1/31/2020

Western Digital and Kioxia Announce BiCS5 112-Layer 3D NAND

Western Digital and Kioxia have announced the successful development of their newest generation of 3D NAND flash memory. Their fifth-generation BiCS 3D NAND has commenced production in the form...

19 by Billy Tallis on 1/30/2020

Fire At Kioxia & Western Digital NAND Fab - Impact on Supply to be Minimal

Kioxia has reportedly informed its customers that a production tool at one of its fabs caught fire early on Tuesday. The fire was promptly extinguished and no casualties were...

6 by Anton Shilov on 1/8/2020

Western Digital Demonstrates 8TB Portable 20 Gbps SSD, Announces Dual-Connector 1TB Thumb Drive

Western Digital has a history of showcasing cutting-edge technological advancements in the consumer electronics space at CES every year. In 2019, a 4TB thumb drive was demonstrated, and this...

12 by Ganesh T S on 1/6/2020

Western Digital Begins to Sample 18 TB & 20 TB ‘Energy Assisted’ Hard Drives

Western Digital has started partner sampling of its 18 TB and 20 TB energy-assisted magnetic recording (EAMR) drives. The HDDs utilize WD's up and coming EAMR tech to further...

23 by Anton Shilov on 12/23/2019

Western Digital Rolls-Out Two New SweRV RISC-V Cores For Microcontrollers

Western Digital has added two new processor cores — the SweRV Core EH2 and the SweRV Core EL2 — into its SweRV portfolio of microcontroller CPUs. And, keeping in...

14 by Anton Shilov on 12/13/2019

Western Digital: Expect More Energy-Assisted Tech For 24 TB & Beyond

Western Digital has been promoting its microwave assisted magnetic recording (MAMR) technology for over a couple of years now, yet surprisingly, its upcoming 18 TB and 20 TB drives...

12 by Anton Shilov on 12/12/2019

Western Digital Announces WD Blue SN550 SSD

Western Digital is refreshing their NVMe-based WD Blue product line, replacing the WD Blue SN500 with the new WD Blue SN550. The SN550 updates both the controller and NAND...

15 by Billy Tallis on 12/10/2019

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