Items tagged with WD
Notebooks often have limited storage capacity, despite significant advancements over the last few years. An M.2 drive is only the size of a stick of gum, but not every laptop can fit more than one or two drives at a time, and some users aren't comfortable opening up their machine to upgrade them, which ultimately limits their storage capabilities. This is particularly painful in gaming notebooks, when many games can take up dozens of gigabytes a piece. Western Digital thinks it has a solution, though. The WD Black D50 Game Dock is an all-in-one Thunderbolt 3 dock and PCI Express NVMe storage controller rolled up into one. The idea is that we can plug in a single cable and feed all of our power,...
Read more...
Spinning hard disks are completely out for just about all but the very cheapest of systems. Solid state drives like the WD Blue SN550 we'll be evaluating in this article are here to stay, and continue to make their way into lower-priced, ever more affordable notebooks and desktops. That's no doubt due to the fact that these drives' asking prices have consistently dropped year over year. In 2020, there hasn't been much good news on the affordable, widely-available PC hardware front, but SSD availability has been one bright spot. There's never been a better time to grab an SSD to speed up any PC still chugging along with magnetic media. Western Digital isn't a newcomer to solid state storage,...
Read more...
The Steam Autumn sale kicked off yesterday, and you may be buying a few more games that you want to try out. The biggest problem you could encounter is not knowing what games to uninstall so you have room to install others. However, Western Digital has you covered this Black Friday with some stellar deals on storage, so you can install and play the games you want, without having to sacrifice those that you already have, in order to free up storage space. Western Digital 1TB WD_Black SN750 NVMe Internal Gaming SSD Today, the top deal we have for you is this WD_Black 1TB M.2 SSD coming in at a whopping 54% off, bringing the price down to $115. If you need to store some games, this is...
Read more...
The good people at Make-A-Wish Massachusetts and Rhode Island have been helping kids with critical health conditions make their dreams come true for decades now. Founded in 1980, Make-A-Wish "grants wishes for children between the ages of 2½ and 18 years of age with life-threatening medical conditions to enrich the human experience with hope, strength, and joy. For a child with a life-threatening illness, a wish fulfilled provides profound joy and lasting hope to keep fighting and dreaming for the future." In its 32-year history, the organization has granted over 8,500 wishes for children in the Massachusetts and Rhode Island area. Recently, we were fortunate enough to...
Read more...
We have been hearing about massive capacity hard drives in the neighborhood of 18TB (and even higher) for several months now, but they have remained elusive products. Not anymore, apparently. An online retailer in the UK is now accepting orders for Western Digital's 18TB and 16TB Gold HDDs, neither of which have actually been announced yet. The landing page on Western Digital's website for its Gold series still lists capacities ranging from 1TB to 14TB, and nothing bigger. That said, we can tell you that the new 18TB and 16TB models are aimed at enterprise customers, as these storage drives are designed to withstand the rigors of 24x7 usage. "WD Gold has sophisticated monitoring electronics that...
Read more...
In this episode of HotHardware’s Two And Half Geeks Podcast, Marco, Chris and Dave chat about AMD's Zen 2 architecture, its Ryzen 3000 series CPU and 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X, the upcoming Navi-based Radeon RX 5700 series, WD's Black SN750 Heatsink NVMe SSD, Netgear's Nighthawk AX8 WiFi 6 router, the fabulous OnePlus 7 Pro and more! Show Notes: 05:15 - AMD Zen 2 Architecture Explored: What Makes Ryzen 3000 So Powerful 14:40 - AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Drops 16-Core, 32-Thread Zen 2 Bombshell On PC Gaming Market 16:17 - AMD Unveils Navi RDNA Architecture: Under The Hood Of Radeon RX 5700 28:20 - WD Black SN750 NVMe Heatsink SSD Review: Speedy And Cool 35:05 - Netgear Nighthawk AX8...
Read more...
A few weeks back, we took a look at the WD Blue SN500 SSD. That solid state drive is an affordable NVMe M.2 option, that’s targeted at mainstream systems and budget-constrained users. The WD Blue SN500 offers the benefits of NVMe, with pricing that is in-line with legacy SATA devices. The drive we’ll be looking at today, however, the WD Black SN750 SSD with Heatsink, takes things in a completely different direction. The WD Black SN750 SSD with Heatsink targets enthusiasts and gamers, and offers much higher performance in some scenarios. It is also priced higher, but not exorbitantly so. The WD Black SN750 SSD with Heatsink is by no means a mainstream drive, as you’ll see shortly,...
Read more...
In this episode of HotHardware’s Two And Half Geeks, Marco, Chris and Dave chat about some sweet new NVMe SSDs from Samsung and WD, the hot new OnePlus 7 Pro Android flagship, Fractal Design's Define S2 Vision RGB case, Huawei's government and supplier woes and more! Show Notes: 06:50 - Samsung 883 And 983 DCT SSD Review: Enterprise Class Storage At Consumer Prices 15:30 - WD Blue SN500 SSD Review: NVMe Performance, Dirt Cheap 22:10 - Fractal Design Define S2 Vision RGB Case Review: Premium DIY PC Chassis 34:40 - OnePlus 7 Pro: A Beastly SD855 Flagship With Triple Cams, 90Hz Display, Huge Battery And A Great Price Tag 53:38 - Google Yanks Huawei's Android License Leaving Future...
Read more...
WD’s Blue family of solid state drives has historically been comprised of nothing but SATA-based offerings, but the company recently updated the line-up with some brand-new NVMe-based drives. The WD Blue SN500 we’ll be showing you here today is the first Blue-branded NVMe SSD from the company, and as has been the case with many of WD’s “Blue” products, it is aggressively priced and pushes NVMe into more mainstream territory. The WD Blue SN500, however, does not target the high-end of the NVMe market; that is the WD Black family's job. As you’ll see in the WD Blue SN500’s specifications below, it’s much more tame than many of other NVMe solid state...
Read more...
On this episode of HotHardware’s Two And Half Geeks, Marco, Chris and Dave will be talking about Samsung's hot new SSD 970 EVO Plus solid state drive, Dell's sweet, refreshed XPS 13 laptop, some WD external storage goodness, the supposed Turing-based GeForce GTX 1660, and say what? Quake 2 Ray Traced? Show Notes: 09:05 - Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus Review: Optimized For Speed 21:12 - WD My Passport Wireless SSD Review: Network Storage On The Go 32:25 - Dell XPS 13 (9380) 2019 Review: So Close To Perfection 46:59 - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Turing Branding Confirmed In Presentation Leak 49:52 - Alleged NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Turing GPU Benchmarks Leaked 56:14 - Quake 2 Gloriously Revitalized...
Read more...
Western Digital is one of the world’s largest storage manufacturers with a wide array of products to meet their customer's unique needs. Its My Passport Wireless line of external drives offer more than just convenient storage. With on-board Wi-Fi, battery, and SD card readers, WD bills them as a working photographer’s best friend. That certainly sounds like a common use case for a device like this, but will this latest WD My Passport live up to its promise? WD sent over their latest My Passport Wireless SSD for us to use and review. The SSD version is available in capacities from 250GB to a spacious 2TB. They range in price from $199.99 to $749.99 respectively. Our unit is the...
Read more...
Western Digital recently launched a new family of NVMe-based solid state drives targeting gamers and enthusiasts. The simply-branded WD Black NVMe SSD family has a similar naming convention to some previous-generation solid state drives built by the company, but these latest offerings are packing some new technology and offer performance much higher than any of the earlier WD-made storage product offerings that came before it. The WD Black NVMe SSD family features a new controller, 64-layer BiCS3 3D TLC NAND flash memory, an intelligently laid-out PCB that optimizes thermal characteristics, and firmware tuned for enthusiast desktop applications. The drive’s main features and specifications...
Read more...
We are big fans of network attached storage (NAS) solutions, which in recent years have become far more sophisticated and capable. Western Digital's My Cloud products have generally been a solid option in the NAS arena. Unfortunately, it was recently discovered that several My Cloud devices were susceptible to a backdoor vulnerability that could allow an attacker to gain unauthorized root access. Fortunately, WD is working to resolve the issue. WD acknowledged the security holes in a blog post, saying that critical issues that were brought up in some recent articles were addressed last year with firmware update version 2.30.172 and above. As for the other issues, WD said it will address them...
Read more...
The need for more bulk storage isn't slowing down, and in fact continues to grow at an incredible rate. At one point, a 4TB hard drive seemed like it offered a ton of digital breathing room. Today, that's not so much the case. As we capture our photos and videos at higher resolutions (8K is right around the corner), many users will reach a point where they feel they simply can't have enough storage. And that's to say nothing of the insatiable appetite for storage in the enterprise and data center. Earlier this year, HGST blew our minds when it began shipping its first 12TB hard drive, the Ultrastar He12. Now, the WD-owned HGST division is being followed up by WD itself, with the Gold...
Read more...
WD recently updated its mainstream Blue line of solid state drives with new 64-layer 3D BiCS NAND flash memory. When we first took a look at the original WD Blue SSD, we found it to be an admirable performer with competitive pricing. This new generation of drives, however, promises better performance and features all of the firmware tweaks and optimizations WD has gleaned over the Blue SSD line’s lifetime.In addition, SanDisk branded versions of the drive are hitting the market as well. Internally the WD Blue with 3D NAND and new SanDisk Ultra 3D are virtually identical, but the drives will target different distribution channels. The WD Blue 3D is for do-it-yourselfers and is headed into the...
Read more...
Western Digital is the king of the hard drive market but up to now has been a non-factor in SSDs. However, with its purchase of solid state storage giant, SanDisk, the company immediately leaped to the forefront of the market in one fell swoop. Now the company is entering the consumer/commercial SSD market with WD Green and WD Blue SSDs, using a naming scheme borrowed from its hard drive line and technology acquired from SanDisk. WD's Green lineup is for entry level PCs meant to have a low power draw while the Blue SSD series is aimed at mainstream consumers. Both series are available in both 2.5″ SATA III and M.2 SATA III form factors. The WD Green SSD is only available in lower density...
Read more...
After looking into the matter, the European Commission has given Western Digital its blessing to complete the company's proposed acquisition of rival SanDisk. Regulators ultimately decided that the pairing of two U.S. storage giants would not adversely affect competition in Europe, in part because the overlap between the two manufacturers is effectively limited to flash memory storage products in the enterprise space. "I am pleased that we have been able to ensure that this multi-billion dollar deal in a fast-developing industry can go ahead without delay. We have worked efficiently, in cooperation with our U.S. counterparts, to scrutinize this takeover in the strategically important IT sector...
Read more...
Considering the fact that Western Digital just made a mammoth acquisition, I'm sure it would have preferred that bad news surrounding some of its products could have come out at any other time. Nonetheless, anyone that purchased a My Passport external hard drive between 2007 and 2013 and has been taking advantage of its built-in security features will want to take note. According to research conducted by Gunnar Alendal, Christian Kison, and modg, we've learned that all My Passport drives manufactured between those years have a gaping flaw that renders their built-in encryption pretty much useless. It doesn't matter if the drive channels data through USB 2.0, USB 3.0, FireWire or Thunderbolt -...
Read more...
We've come a long way since the days when hard drives were measured in megabytes. Underscoring that point is the industry's first 10TB enterprise-class HDD, the host-managed Ultrastar Archive Ha10 SMR built by HGST, a division of Western Digital. HGST says the capacious HDD is intended of next-generation archive applications. The 10TB monster is a helium-based drive, the third of its kind by HGST in the past two years. HGST says it's deployed over a million helium-based HelioSeal HDDs to date and is super confident in the technology's reliability. In the task the new drive was purpose built for -- active archive duties -- HGST says the Ultrastar Archive Ha10 is the market leader in reliability...
Read more...
Two And A Half Geeks 5/14/2015: Broadwell NUC w/ Iris Pro, ASUS T300 Chi, Samsung Galaxy S6 and More
In this latest episode of HotHardware’s Two and a Half Geeks, Dave, Marco, and long-time HH tech editor extraordinaire, Paul Lilly, discuss Intel's latest 18-core Xeons, the Broadwell NUC with Iris Pro and the Compute Stick, the slick Asus T300 Chi ultrabook, Samsung’s Galaxy S 6 and LG’s G4, our awesome Syber giveaway, which is running until the end of the month, and much more... Show Notes: 02:00 - Intel Launches Xeon E7-8800 and E7-4800 v3 Processor Families 08:33 - Asus Transformer Book T300 Chi 2-in-1 Ultrabook Review 18:43 - Intel Compute Stick PC Review: Tiny, Sleek, And Versatile 23:09 - Intel Broadwell NUC NUC5i7RYH With Iris Pro Graphics Mini-PC Review 26:27 - Ditching...
Read more...
The WD My Cloud EX2100 is a new prosumer-oriented NAS drive from WD that continues the company's adventures in the realm of "personal cloud" storage. These drives are aimed directly at people who use Cloud storage such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Box.com, and others. The marketing speak from WD is that those services require a monthly payment for a small amount of storage, and you have to store your data on someone else's cloud. For example Dropbox charges $10 a month for 1TB of storage, and Google charges the same. WD's pitch is you can get multiple terabytes of storage with one of its drives, and use it as your own personal cloud storage, with the files accessible from any location with an internet...
Read more...
Western Digital ended the work week by rolling out four new network attached storage (NAS) solutions split into two product segments -- the My Cloud Expert Series consisting of the My Cloud EX2100 (two-bay solution) and My Cloud EX4100 (four-bay solution), and the My Cloud Business Series with the My Cloud DL2100 (two-bay) and My Cloud DL4100 (four-bay).The My Cloud EX2100 and EX4100 sport the latest versions of the dual-core ARMADA processor (385 and 388) and offer top-class read and write speeds for simultaneous, high-performance HD media streaming and up to 24TB of storage capacity, WD says.Both solutions come with WD Red drives that are designed for NAS boxes. They can be configured using...
Read more...
