Western Digital
When Western Digital introduced its Ultrastar DC SN861 SSDs earlier this year, the company did not disclose which controller it used for these drives, which made many observers presume that WD was using an in-house controller. But a recent teardown of the drive shows that is not the case; instead, the company is using a controller from Fadu, a South Korean company founded in 2015 that specializes on enterprise-grade turnkey SSD solutions. The Western Digital Ultrastar DC SN861 SSD is aimed at performance-hungry hyperscale datacenters and enterprise customers which are adopting PCIe Gen5 storage devices these days. And, as uncovered in photos from a recent Storage Review article, the drive is based on Fadu's FC5161 NVMe 2.0-compliant controller. The FC5161 utilizes 16 NAND channels supporting...
Western Digital Updates WD Blue Series with SN580 DRAM-less Gen4 NVMe SSD
Western Digital is unveiling its latest addition to the mainstream WD Blue family today - the SN580 NVMe SSD. A DRAM-less PCIe 4.0 x4 drive, it brings in performance...
4 by Ganesh T S on 6/28/2023Western Digital Estimates HAMR HDDs to Emerge in 1.5 Years
Western Digital is somewhat behind its rival Seagate in adopting heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), which promises radical improvements to areal density and HDD capacities. Still, the company expects hard...
16 by Anton Shilov on 6/12/2023Western Digital Unveils Xbox Series X|S Expansion Cards
Ever since Microsoft introduced its Xbox Series X/S game consoles in late 2020, Seagate has been exclusively selling storage expansion cards for these systems. But to the chagrin of...
8 by Anton Shilov on 6/6/2023Kioxia and Western Digital Debut 218-Layer 3D NAND: 1Tb TLC with 3.2 GT/s IO Speed
Kioxia and Western Digital formally introduced their 8th Generation BiCS 3D NAND memory with 218 active layers. The new storage device offers a 1Tb capacity in 3D TLC mode...
34 by Anton Shilov on 3/31/2023NAND Flash Prices Have Dropped Rapidly In Recent Quarters - And So Have SSD Prices
Softened demand for PCs and smartphones coupled with NAND memory bits oversupply has sent prices of 3D NAND memory into a dive in recent quarters. In Q4, global NAND...
20 by Anton Shilov on 3/20/2023Dropbox Shares Preparations for HAMR Hard Drives, Focusing On Reducing Drive Vibrations
Dropbox was among the first large cloud service providers (CSPs) providers to deploy hard drives that use shingled magnetic recording (SMR) to increase storage density of its datacenters. As...
4 by Anton Shilov on 3/13/2023Western Digital Launches 22 TB HDD for Consumers in Updated My Book Portfolio
Western Digital's 22 TB hard disk drives hit retail in July 2022, with a trio of products catering to the prosumer and business / enterprise markets. Today, the company...
13 by Ganesh T S on 2/15/2023Western Digital Unveils Dual Actuator Ultrastar DC HS760 20TB HDD
Without much fanfare, Western Digital this week introduced its first dual actuator hard drive, a 20TB drive that is designed to offer SATA SSD-like sequential read/write performance. The Ultrastar...
35 by Anton Shilov on 2/1/2023WD_BLACK P40 Game Drive USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Portable SSD Review: Balanced Storage
Western Digital had announced new products in the WD_BLACK lineup back in May 2022 to augment their offerings in the gaming market. The WD_BLACK P40 Game Drive SSD was...
6 by Ganesh T S on 11/18/2022SanDisk Professional PRO-G40 Thunderbolt / USB Dual-Mode Portable SSD Review
Western Digital is introducing a new flagship portable SSD today under the SanDisk Professional brand. The PRO-G40 dual-mode PSSD ticks all the right boxes for prosumers, content creators, and...
13 by Ganesh T S on 10/6/2022Western Digital 22TB WD Gold, Red Pro, and Purple HDDs Hit Retail
Western Digital's 'What's Next' event back in May 2022 had seen the announcement of its 22TB platform based on ePMR and OptiNAND (with ArmorCache). At the event, WD indicated...
22 by Ganesh T S on 7/19/2022Destination 30 TB: HDD Vendors Plan Different Routes to Hit Storage Milestone in 2023
In the recent months all three hard drive manufacturers — Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital — and some of their partners have outlined plans to ship 30TB HDDs already...
24 by Anton Shilov on 6/3/2022Western Digital Announces 22TB CMR and 26TB SMR HDDs: 10 Platters plus ePMR
Western Digital is announcing the sampling of its new 22TB CMR and 26TB SMR hard drives today at its What's Next Western Digital Event. As usual, the hyperscale cloud...
25 by Ganesh T S on 5/9/2022SanDisk Professional PRO-BLADE Modular SSD Ecosystem Unveiled
Western Digital is announcing a host of products under the SanDisk and SanDisk Professional brands today at its What's Next Western Digital Event. The company also provided a second...
6 by Ganesh T S on 5/9/2022Western Digital Announces WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe and P40 Game Drive SSDs
Western Digital is announcing a host of consumer-focused SSD solutions today at its What's Next Western Digital Event. The gaming-focused WD_BLACK is getting the SN850X NVMe SSD and the...
10 by Ganesh T S on 5/9/2022Western Digital Introduces WD_BLACK SN770: A DRAM-less PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD
The initial wave of PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs put emphasis on raw benchmark numbers, with power consumption remaining an afterthought. The targeting of high-end desktop platforms ensured that it...
31 by Ganesh T S on 2/2/2022Western Digital Spills Beans on HDD Plans: 30TB HDDs Planned, MAMR's Future Unclear
Western Digital this week said that its energy-assisted magnetic recording (ePMR) and OptiNAND technologies coupled with increased number of platters per hard drive would enable it to build HDDs...
41 by Anton Shilov on 12/2/2021Seagate Exos X20 and IronWolf Pro 20TB Expand Retail 20TB HDD Options
Seagate has updated their flagship capacity options for the retail HDD market with the availability announcement for two new hard drives today - the Exos X20 and IronWolf Pro...
10 by Ganesh T S on 12/2/2021SanDisk Professional G-DRIVE SSD and ArmorLock SSD Review
Western Digital introduced the SanDisk Professional branding in May 2021 for its G-Technology products targeting the content-capture market. The company has taken the opportunity to update some of the...
6 by Ganesh T S on 10/12/2021Western Digital Updates WD Blue Series with SN570 DRAM-less NVMe SSD
Western Digital is unveiling its latest addition to the WD Blue family today - the SN570 NVMe SSD. A DRAM-less PCIe 3.0 x4 drive, it brings in performance improvements...
21 by Ganesh T S on 10/4/2021