Western Digital
Western Digital has introduced its new series of SSDs aimed at mainstream PCs, which combine high performance and low cost. The Western Digital PC SN5000S family of DRAM-less drives uses the company's 3D QLC NAND memory and an in-house-developed platform, so the SSDs promise to be relatively inexpensive. Meanwhile, their sequential read performance reaches 6,000 MB/s. Western Digital's PC SN5000S drives are based on the company's latest in-house controller, which supports a PCIe 4.0 x4 host interface and BICS6 3D QLC NAND memory. The controller fully supports Western Digital's nCache 4.0 HybridSLC technology with endurance monitoring to ensure decent performance, RSA-3K and SHA-384 encryption, and TCG Opal 2.02 and Pyrite security capabilities. On the capacity side, Western Digital's PC SN5000S drives will be available in 512...
Western Digital Releases Black^2: 120GB SSD + 1TB HD Dual-Drive in 2.5" Form Factor
To date all the hybrid storage solutions we have seen have been rather limited. Seagate got the idea right with the Momentus XT but having only 8GB of NAND...
66 by Kristian Vättö on 11/25/2013Western Digital Updates My Cloud Lineup with 4-bay EX4
We had covered the launch of the Western Digital My Cloud platform last month. The unit available at launch was a single-bay version similar to the popular My Book...
8 by Ganesh T S on 11/12/2013Western Digital Sentinel Lineup Updated with Xeon-Based Ultra-Compact Servers
Western Digital's SMB / enterprise network storage lineup (the Sentinel series) has been based on the Microsoft Windows Storage Server platform. The most recent update to the Sentinel lineup...
10 by Ganesh T S on 10/10/2013Western Digital Launches My Cloud Consumer NAS Platform
The network attached storage market is growing by leaps and bounds. While the SMB (small and medium business) / enterprise market is driven by speed, IOPS and concurrent access...
27 by Ganesh T S on 10/2/2013Battle of the 4 TB NAS Drives: WD Red and Seagate NAS HDD Face-Off
The SMB / SOHO / consumer NAS market is expected to experience good growth over the next few years. With declining PC sales and increase in affordability of SSDs...
54 by Ganesh T S on 9/4/2013Western Digital Updates Red NAS Drive Lineup with 4 TB and 2.5" Versions
In July 2012, we saw Western Digital tackle the burgeoning NAS market with the 3.5" Red hard drive lineup. They specifically catered to units having 1-5 bays. The firmware...
29 by Ganesh T S on 9/3/2013The Joys of 802.11ac WiFi
We’ve had quite a few major wireless networking standards over the years, and while some have certainly been better than others, I have remained a strong adherent of wired...
139 by Jarred Walton on 7/8/2013Western Digital Acquires STEC
Western Digital just announced that they've entered into an agreement to acquire STEC for approximately $340 million in cash. Technically STEC will be acquired by HGST (Hitachi Global Storage...
7 by Kristian Vättö on 6/24/2013Western Digital Launches RX4100 Rackmount SMB Storage Server
Western Digital's Windows Storage Server based DX4000 has been very well received by SMBs. However, its desktop form factor restricted the target market. After listening to feedback from customers...
3 by Ganesh T S on 5/30/2013Western Digital Launches WD Se Hard Drive Lineup for Datacenters and High-end NAS Units
One of the most interesting launches from Western Digital last year was the WD Red line of hard drives from the client storage division. It was intended for low...
23 by Ganesh T S on 5/28/2013Western Digital and SanDisk Announce Partnership to Produce Hybrid Drives
Yesterday Western Digital and SanDisk announced their collaboration for hybrid hard drives (or SSHDs as they are now called). The idea behind the move is that SanDisk will supply...
30 by Kristian Vättö on 5/9/2013HGST/G-Technology Touro, G|Drive, and G|RAID
We met with HGST at their hotel suite and were interested to hear their plans now that they’ve been acquired by WD. Western Digital bought HGST (who had previously...
0 by Jarred Walton on 1/9/2013Hands On With Western Digital's New 5mm Hybrid Hard Drive
Remember the 5mm hybrid HDD announcement from yesterday? I just spent some time with the drive itself at the IDF Tech Showcase. The 5mm drive will be OEM-only at...
17 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/11/2012Western Digital Teases 5mm Hybrid Hard Drive
Intel's Ultrabook push has forced hard drive makers to do two things: take hybrid drives more seriously (because of the Ultrabook performance requirements) as well as focus on thinner...
13 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/10/2012Western Digital My Book VelociRaptor Duo Review
With Thunderbolt ports available on both Macs and PCs, as well as Thunderbolt controller costs dropping thanks to the introduction of Intel's Cactus Ridge, the Thunderbolt storage space is...
30 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 8/30/2012Western Digital Red Review: Are NAS-optimized HDDs Worth the Premium?
Western Digital (WD) introduced hard drives specifically targeted towards NAS systems under the Red branding last month. We had some initial coverage at launch time, where WD claimed a...
87 by Ganesh T S on 8/17/2012Western Digital Enters Router Market with My Net Series
We recently had the opportunity to take a meeting with Western Digital in San Francisco, California while a good chunk of the press were out in Taipei for Computex...
25 by Dustin Sklavos on 6/14/2012A Tale Of Two Thunderbolt Storage Devices: Seagate's GoFlex Desk and Western Digital's Thunderbolt Duo
I remember the early days of the USB-vs-FireWire wars like they were yesterday, although Wikipedia reminds me that they were more than a decade ago (sigh). USB 1.0 arrived...
46 by Brian Dipert on 5/13/2012Western Digital VelociRaptor 1TB (WD1000DHTZ) Review
There was a time when Western Digital's Raptor (and later, the VelociRaptor) was a staple of any high-end desktop build. Rotational media could only deliver better performance by increasing...
92 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 4/16/2012Western Digital To Sell Hitachi's 3.5” Hard Drive Business To Toshiba, Complete Hitachi Buyout
Almost exactly a year ago, Western Digital announced that they would be buying Hitachi’s hard drive division from Hitachi for $4.3 billion. Since then, the two companies have been...
9 by Ryan Smith on 3/6/2012