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...
New 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 3/14/2019
Western 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 3/12/2019
Western 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 3/8/2019
Micron 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 2/26/2019
512 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 2/25/2019
Western 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 2/15/2019
HOYA 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
The Western Digital WD Black SN750 SSD Review: Why Fix What Isn't Broken?
Last year Western Digital overhauled their WD Black NVMe SSD with an upgrade to 3D NAND and a new in-house SSD controller, transforming the product line from one of...
55 by Billy Tallis on 1/18/2019
Quick Look: Using WD's Black SN750 SSD as a Thunderbolt 3 External Drive
External SSDs with a Thunderbolt 3 interface are still the only option for users looking to get high-end performance in a bus-powered portable device. These SSDs have become possible...
10 by Ganesh T S on 1/18/2019
Western Digital at CES 2019: External Flash Storage Solutions Showcased
In addition to the SanDisk Extreme PRO Portable SSD and the 4TB thumb drive prototype demonstration, Western Digital also had announcements related to a couple of additional external flash...
7 by Ganesh T S on 1/8/2019
Western Digital Demonstrates 4TB USB-C Thumb Drive Prototype at CES 2019
At CES 2019, Western Digital is demonstrating a prototype of a 4TB thumb drive with a Type-C interface. To be more precise, the form factor is that of a...
19 by Ganesh T S on 1/8/2019
SanDisk's Mainstream Extreme PRO Portable SSD Goes NVMe
At CES 2019, Western Digital demonstrated a number of direct-attached flash solutions. Out of all the showcased items with imminent retail availability, one deserves separate mention. Under the SanDisk...
8 by Ganesh T S on 1/8/2019
16 TB MAMR Hard Drives in 2019: Western Digital
Western Digital revealed recently that it has begun to sample its next-generation hard drives based on microwave assisted magnetic recording (MAMR) technology. The sampling is a prelude to mass...
25 by Anton Shilov on 1/4/2019
Western Digital Reveals SweRV RISC-V Core, Cache Coherency over Ethernet Initiative
Western Digital this week made three important announcements concerning its RISC-V-based processor initiative launched last year. The company introduced its own SweRV general-purpose core, its OmniXtend cache coherency over...
11 by Anton Shilov on 12/5/2018
Best Consumer Hard Drives: Holiday 2018
Data storage requirements have kept increasing over the last several years. While SSDs have taken over the role of the primary drive in most computing systems, hard drives continue...
0 by Ganesh T S on 11/15/2018
Western Digital Announces Ultrastar DC ME200 Memory Extension Drive
Western Digital on Monday introduced its new special-purpose SSD designed to speed up in-memory processing applications. The new Ultrastar DC ME200 Memory Extension Drive uses proven hardware and comes...
8 by Anton Shilov on 11/13/2018
New Halo 15TB HDDs: Western Digital Unveils the Ultrastar DC HC620
Western Digital this week introduced its new Ultrastar DC HC620 family of hard drives that consists of 14 TB and 15 TB models. The HDDs use shingled magnetic recording...
19 by Anton Shilov on 10/26/2018
Western Digital Unveils iNAND MC EU321: a UFS 2.1 Drive Based on 96L 3D NAND
Western Digital has announced its new lineup of UFS 2.1-based embedded storage devices for smartphones, tablets, PCs, and other mobile applications. The new iNAND MC EU321 drives are based...
5 by Anton Shilov on 10/12/2018
SanDisk Extreme microSD Cards with A2 App Performance Spec Unveiled: 4K/2K IOPS
Western Digital’s SanDisk division on Friday unveiled its first lineup of microSD cards that are compliant with the App Performance 2 (A2) specification. The new SanDisk Extreme cards are...
23 by Anton Shilov on 10/5/2018
Seagate Fast SSD and SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD 1TB USB 3.1 DAS Review
The advent of 3D TLC flash and high-speed interfaces such as USB 3.1 Gen 2 and Thunderbolt 3 has resulted in a number of economical high-performance direct-attached storage devices...
17 by Ganesh T S on 9/27/2018
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