Items tagged with Western Digital
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...
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Last week, Western Digital pulled the wraps off a new WD Black NVMe PCIe SSDaimed at gamers. Today, the company has a new range of SSDs aimed at video producers that need large capacities and ultra-fast speeds for offloading their footage. The three external SSDs all use the high-speed Thunderbolt 3 interface and encompass the G-Technology D-DRIVE and G-SPEED product families. The G-DRIVE Mobile Pro offers sustained transfer rate of up to 2,800MB/sec, allowing you to transfer a terabyte of data in seven minutes or less. The drive itself is ready for rough and tumble activity with its shock-resistant...
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Western Digital is rolling out a pair of solid state drives that take aim at both the Internet of Things (IoT) and "Fast Data" applications markets. The company's new PC SN720 and PC SN520. The new drives feature three-dimensional (3D) NAND flash memory underneath the hood and "groundbreaking" new firmware and controller architecture purpose built to leverage those chips. They're also incredibly fast. Starting with the PC SN720, Western Digital plans to ship the drive in 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities on a single-sided M.2 2280 form factor, which means it's one of those fancy gum stick-sized...
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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...
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Western Digital might be best known for its mechanical hard drives, but the company has not ignored the solid state drive movement. Proving that to be the case, WD unveiled a couple of SSD products at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, including the My Passport Wireless SSD under its own branding, and the Extreme Portable SSD under its SanDisk label, which it purchased in 2015 for $19 billion. Interestingly, WD is pitching both products at "avid photographers and drone enthusiasts" who are in need of durable and high-performance media capture solutions. Starting with the My Passport Wireless...
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In case you have noticed, our data storage needs are growing at an exponential rate. Data centers have an increasing need to store huge amounts of information to power our digital world. Although there is an increasing shift towards solid state drive (SSDs) for their blazing fast performance and low-power profile, hard disk drive (HDDs) still carry the brunt of the load when it comes to storage currently and in the immediate future. According to Western Digital, roughly 70 percent of the thousands of exabytes of data globally will reside on HDDs, versus 30 percent for flash. When focusing solely...
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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...
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Western Digital has tossed a new portable storage solution onto the market that photography pros and amateurs alike will appreciate if they are working with large file sizes. The drive is marketed by G-Technology and is called the G-Drive mobile SSD R-Series. The portable drive is aimed primarily at professional photographers, enabling them to offload high-resolution photos and 4K video at 560 MB/s over the USB-C interface. G-Technology says that the fast 560MB/s transfer speed is enough to allow content creators to work with large files in real time. The "R" in the name stands for rugged, because...
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If you’re in the market for a ridiculous amount of external storage for your computer, Western Digital has you covered with the latest entry in its My Book Duo storage family. The company announced that it is now offering a 20TB model, which features two 10TB drives operated in RAID. RAID-1 mode will allow you to mirror the drives for extra redundancy (and peace of mind), leaving you with just 10TB of capacity between the two HDDs within the external enclosure. However, RAID-0 mode enables striping to spread data across both drives, helping to improve overall performance. According to Western Digital,...
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Western Digital today announced that it has successfully developed four bit-per-cell (also known as X4) 3D NAND built using 64-layer, BiCS3 technology. The company says that these chips can store 768 gigabits on a single chip (equivalent to 96GB), which is a 50% increase from 512 gigabit three bit-per-cell NAND (as basic math verifies). WD's X4 3D NAND was designed with the help of the company's work with X4 2D NAND, and one thing in particular the company is really proud of is the fact that its QLC flash delivers performance similar to that of X3 three bit-per-cell NAND. What that means is that...
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This week at Computex, Western Digital announced its first line of consumer SSDs that are based on 64-layer 3D NAND memory. Western Digital is marketing the new SSDs under both its WD Blue 3D and SanDisk Ultra 3D families, and aside from labeling, they appear to feature identical specifications. All of the SSDs will be available in 250GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities, and all use a SATA 6Gb/sec interface — so don’t expect to see the insane read and write speeds typically associated with NVMe PCIe SSDs that are increasingly becoming popular in the consumer space. Instead, sequential read speeds...
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Western Digital’s popular WD Red and WD Red Pro storage families are expanding once again, this time moving into 10TB territory (up from the previous high of 8GB). As you might expect with today’s high-capacity hard disk drives, the latest entries are filled with helium (branded HelioSeal in Western Digital parlance) to reduce platter drag and thus improve performance. Given the “Red” designation, these new HDDs are optimized for NAS environments and incorporate 3D Active Balance Plus technology to improve performance and reliability. The WD Red spins at 5400RPM, features 128MB of cache, and is...
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At this point, it's hard to tell what the top limit for densities will be with current mechanical hard drive technologies, but HGST proves that it's not 12TB. With the company's brand-new Ultrastar He12, enterprise users can take advantage of a staggering 12,000GB capacity in a single hard disk drive, and relish in the fact that it's backed by a 5-year warranty. One of the standout features of the He12 is one that's not easy to see just by looking at it. Under the hood is are an industry-leading eight platters, with simple math telling us that each one is 1.5TB in size. The areal density on these...
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As we’ve seen with Western Digital’s Blue, Green and Black lines, the company is deeply committed to solid-state storage despite its storied history as a provider of spinning storage media. However, its SSD products to date have been aimed at those that need to add fast internal storage to a desktop or notebook. But what about those that want the durability and speed benefits of SSDs in a form-factor that we can carry around with us? Well, Western Digital is looking to address that need with the introduction of the My Passport SSD — the company’s first external SSD product. While Western Digital...
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