Items tagged with Western Digital
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...
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If you're looking to expand the storage available on your smartphone, add a new Secure Digital card for your D-SLR, a new internal SSD four a desktop, or a capacious external HDD for a growing media library, then Amazon has you covered today. The online retail giant has just posted some rather hot deals on SanDisk and Western Digital products that seemingly cover every potential storage device that you may possibly need. If you're looking for Secure Digital or microSD storage solutions, there are a number of deals available: SanDisk 256GB Ultra MicroSDXC @ $27.99 SanDisk Ultra 400GB MicroSDXC @ $44.79 SanDisk 512GB Extreme MicroSDXC @ $87.99 SanDisk 1TB Extreme MicroSDXC @...
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Western Digital is one of the biggest names in storage, and today the company announced it has developed its 5th generation 3D NAND flash memory technology called BiCS5. It is latterly denser than the previous generation of 3D NAND, and also offers more storage layers—112 of them, to be precise. These are important traits because they ensure companies can continue to crank out more capacious storage drives. There is also a performance benefit. According to Western Digital, its 112-layer BiCS5 3D NAND flash memory offers 40 percent more bits per wafer and up to 50 percent more input-output (I/O) performance than its previous generation 96-layer BiCS4 memory. "As we move into the next decade,...
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If you're in the market for a capacious external hard drive to ease the load off your blazing fast SSD for archiving files, Amazon has a deal running today that might just be right up your alley. The online retailer is discounting the Western Digital 8TB Elements external HDD by a whopping $65 (36 percent off), taking it down to a low $114.99. A quick price check shows that this is the lowest price that we've ever seen for the 8TB external hard drive. The 8TB Essentials HDD is a no-frills storage device with a USB 3.0 interface (USB 2.0 compatible) and is plug-and-play compatible with both Windows and macOS (although you’ll probably want to reformat it from the default NTFS). In the box,...
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Remember when storage was measured in megabytes? Yeah, those days are (thankfully) long behind us, as we've raced past gigabytes and into the terabyte era. Maybe petabyte storage will be the norm one day. In the here and now, though, Western Digital just upped the ante by introducing two new high-capacity hard drives for enterprise and hyperscale cloud customers. One is the 20TB Ultrastar DC HC650 and the other is the 18TB Ultrastar DC HC550. Both new models represent WD's first commercial implementation of energy-assisted magnetic recording technology at scale, to deliver higher area density and storage efficiency. They are also durable and reliable, according to WD (which is always a good thing...
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Western Digital today announced its new WD Blue SN550 family of SSDs, which will in effect replace the existing SN500 SKUs. These aren't the company's highest-performing storage solutions, but they do offer a compelling balance of good performance at reasonable price points for those looking to replace a HDD or simply build a low-cost gaming rig. WD SN550 SSDs uses a 4-lane PCIe 3.0 interface along with a Western Digital-designed SSD controller and an in-house 96-layer 3D TLC NAND. Although these are considered entry-level PCIe SSDs, they offer a significant boost in performance over Western Digital's existing SATA products, with the company citing a 4x uplift in read speeds. Western...
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Western Digital is looking to "Paint it Black" with a new family of WD_Black external storage devices targeted squarely at gamers. With the WD_Black label affixed, you can expect to find excellent performance across-the-board, with the new products including one SSD-based device and four HDD-based devices. Let's get the super-fast SSD out the way first: the WD_Black P50 Game Drive. This is the first storage device in the industry to support the USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 port and offers read speeds of up to 2GB/sec. Western Digital says that the P50 Game Drive is available in capacities up to 2TB and comes backed with a 5-year warranty. Pricing has not yet been announced for the P50 Game Drive, but it will...
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Your Xbox One may not be easily portable, but that does not mean your games can’t be. Western Digital just announces its Gaming Drive Accelerated SSD for the Xbox One. The portable SSD allows players to store more games and load them more quickly. The Western Digital (WD) Gaming Drive Accelerated SSD is available in 500GB and 1TB capacities. The 1TB allows users to store up to 25 games. Both versions reportedly load games 50 percent at 400 MB/s read speeds. The SSD is compatible with the Xbox One S and Xbox One X and relies on a USB 3.0 connection. Most importantly, the SSD is portable. It measures 5 X 4 X 1.3 inches (127 X 101.6 X 33.03 millimeters) and weighs 0.2379 pounds (roughly 124.24...
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If you’re looking for high-speed internal storage that won’t break the bank, Western Digital has announced that its WD Blue SSD family is making a performance leap with the introduction of a new NVMe model. The company says that it is aiming these new SSDs at content creators and budget gamers who want a bit more performance than what SATA counterparts can currently offer. With respect to performance, Western Digital says that the new WD Blue SN500 SSDs deliver sequential read and write speeds of up to 1700MB/sec and 1450MB/sec respectively. As for random read/write performance, these figures come in at 275K IOPS and 300K IOPS respectively. According to Western Digital, this...
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The storage needs of smartphone users are not diminishing, they are only expanding with the advent of high resolution photography and 4K video. To account for this, Micron and Western Digital (through its SanDisk subsidiary) announced the industry's very first 1-terabyte capacity microSD storage cards for consumers. While both solutions offer the same amount of capacity, Western Digital's has the higher read performance rating——the 1TB SanDisk Extreme UHS-I microSDXC card is rated to hit read speeds of up to 160MB/s, whereas Micron's c200 1TB microSDXC card is rated to read data at 100MB/s. Rated write speeds are similar between the two at 90MB/s for Western Digital/SanDisk and 95MB/s...
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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...
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Western Digital is back with a new second-generation WD Black Gaming SSD, and it is promising some high-end NVMe PCIe performance for gamers at price points that won't break the bank. As with the previous generation, the new WD Black SN750 is a completely in-house design using Western Digital's 64-bit TLC 3D NAND, firmware and SSD controller. The WD Black SN750 family is available in 4 storage capacities: 250GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB. Although it doesn't sit at the top of the family, the 1TB model is actually the fastest SKU across the board. It makes uses of 256Gb NAND dies versus 512Gb for the 2TB SKU (so that it can remain a single-sided design). The differences between the two in performance...
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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...
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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 design. Power for the drive is provided through the Thunderbolt 3 connection, so you don't...
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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 SSDs that plug directly into a compatible motherboard with an M.2 slot. Built for speed, the company...
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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 firmware update version 2.30.172 and above. As for the other issues, WD said it will address them...
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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 SSD, it is available in 250GB ($229.99), 500GB ($299.99), 1TB ($499.99), and 2TB ($799.99) capacities....
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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 on the data center market, 90 percent of those exabytes will reside on HDDs. Companies are looking...
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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 Ultrastar He12. Now, the WD-owned HGST division is being followed up by WD itself, with the Gold...
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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 it doesn't matter how fast a drive is or how much space it offers for you content if it breaks easily...
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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, when operating in RAID-0, the My Book Duo 20TB is capable of hitting 360 MB/s sequential reads....
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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 consumers shouldn't fret too much over performance, but instead focus on the extra storage they're...
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