Items tagged with Western-Digital
Just last week, many Western Digital MyBook Live owners lamented the fact that their personal cloud was being attacked and wiped remotely. Those storage devices were older and hadn't been supported since 2015. As a result, those NAS products proved to be a lesson in not putting unsecured and unpatched devices on your network. Much more alarming appears to be another zero-day, unpatched bug, this time in the WD's current lineup, and any supported device that hasn't already been updated is vulnerable. Before we go any farther, it's worth noting that WD has solved the issue with MyCloud OS 5. Owners of MyCloud devices should ensure immediately that their drives are fully updated to the latest,...
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Last week, hundreds if not thousands of My Book Live customers awoke to their devices being wiped and, in some cases, unrecoverable. At that time, it was simply thought that Western Digital had not patched a critical vulnerability from 2018 that allowed attackers to do this, but it seems there is more to the story than initially thought. On June 23rd, WD Community Forum user sunspeak created a forum post that would ultimately spearhead the community outcry over the wiping of My Book Live devices. There have now been over 46,000 views and 763 replies on that post at the time of writing, some of which have devolved into fighting whether a company can just "end-of-life" (EOL) a product and not support...
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If you own a Western Digital My Book Live, unplug it from the internet as soon as possible. WD has reported that people have been waking up to find their My Book Live devices completed wiped of installed data due to malicious software performing a factory reset. On June 23rd, WD Community Forum user sunpeak made a post explaining that he found that all his data is gone and the owner password for device management had been changed. At the time of writing, this thread has had over 15,800 views and over 177 responses, many of which echo similar issues. Sunpeak then further elaborated on his issue later in the thread, showing logs of what appears to be a factory restore script being run. After the...
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Prime Day 2021 kicked off with a bang early this morning, and the deals continue to flow in at a furious pace. We’ve already brought you some discounts on things like laptops and wireless earbuds along with console games. Now we’re zeroing in on solid-state drive (SSDs) for those looking to upgrade their gaming rigs. Before we get straight into the deals, we wanted to remind everyone of Amazon’s current Prime Day promotion, giving you a free $10 promotional credit when you purchase a $40 gift card. You can either enter the promo code GCPRIME2021 at checkout or click this link and hit the “Apply code to your account” button. Now, onto the SSD deals… Samsung’s...
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Waiting for games to start because of a not-so-snappy hard drive is a problem of the past anymore. SSDs are becoming larger and cheaper, and chucking in a PC or console can speed up load times and improve the overall experience. As such, Western Digital has announced three new members in its WD_BLACK lineup so that enthusiasts can “upgrade their PC and next-gen console gaming experience.” WD_BLACK SN750 SE NVMe SSD The SN750 SE is a fairly impressive little M.2 drive that would be great to throw a few games onto. It is a DRAM-less solution using PCIe Gen4 technology to hit read speeds up to 3600MB/s and writes up to 2830MB/s. Western Digital claims that this SSD consumes up to 30%...
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As games continue to grow in size, so too do the storage devices required to store copies of Call of Duty, GTA V, and others. Accordingly, Western Digital has announced a size increase for its consumer brand portable SSDs at CES 2021. These new 4TB drives will become available this quarter. but will cost consumers a pretty penny if they want one. SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD The SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD is NVMe powered storage and is one of the fastest in the bunch at 2000MB/s read and write. It features a “forged aluminum chassis” to act as a heatsink for the drive and a USB 3.1 Type C connection for blazing-fast speeds. The models which are available now come with a 5-year warranty...
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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...
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Data storage products for portable devices, game consoles, and computers are items that everyone needs at some point. Anyone wanting to add some storage gear from Western Digital or SanDisk to their inventory should check out Amazon for exclusive discounts on SSDs for desktops to memory cards and everything in between. One of the first deals is a significant 60% discount on a SanDisk 512 GB Extreme microSDXC UHS-I memory card with an adapter. The regular retail price is $199.99, and Amazon is offering it at $120 off, bringing the price to $79.99. This deal is only good for approximately the next 11 hours as of writing. SanDisk 512GB Extreme microSDXC - $120 off at $79.99 The next product on sale...
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Given all the hubbub concerning solid state drives (SSDs) these days, it's easy to forget that there's still a rather large market for traditional hard disk drives (HDDs). Western Digital clearly hasn't forgotten about the market, and is now claiming storage leadership with its new Ultrastar DC HC620. The Ultrastar DC HC620 is available in capacities of up to 15TB, which is just 1TB greater than the previous high watermark for currently shipping HDDs. The Ultrastar DC HC620 makes use of a 3.5-inch form-factor (SAS and SATA interface are available) and leverages second-generation shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology. In addition, Western Digital says that the storage...
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Western Digital (WD) has pulled the wraps off a new high capacity storage drive that is aimed directly at cloud and enterprise data centers. The new Ultrastar DC HC530 has 14TB of storage capacity, which WD says is the highest capacity conventional magnetic recording hard drive on the market today. The HC530 uses fifth-generation HelioSeal technology and is meant to be perfect for environments where storage density, watt/TB and $/TB are critical. The drive will allow enterprise users to build petabyte-scale infrastructures. WD says that the new HC530 is a follow-on to the 14TB shielded magnetic recording drive, the Ultrastar Hs14. Brendan Collins, vice president of marketing, Devices, Western...
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Toshiba has just announced that they will begin shipping samples of its 512 Gigabit, three-bits-per-cell, 64-layer 3D NAND (BiCS 3D). Mass production is expected to take place during the second half of 2017. Western Digital and Toshiba engineers have used digital stacking for their sixty-four layers in order to achieve a much larger storage density for its NAND in a smaller footprint. This technology also enables 1TB chip solutions. The flash memory stacked cell structure is best for applications that require high capacity and performance. According to Toshiba, “realizes a 65 percent larger capacity per unit chip size than the company’s 48-layer, 256Gb (32 gigabyte) device. This increases...
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External storage is commonplace now, but traditional standalone storage products sometimes leave a large number of devices hanging. I've got a 2TB external drive plugged into a USB 3 port, for example, which is great for the main PC, but it doesn't help much with the laptop, iPhone and iPad. That's where some of the latest wireless storage products like the WD My Passport Wireless Pro we're going to be showing you here come in. Through creative piggy-backing onto your Wi-Fi network, you can add multiple terabytes of additional storage that can be accessed by any wirelessly-connected device, giving your phone, tablet, laptop and anything else shared access through a high-speed wireless interface....
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Once you’ve tasted the sweet performance goodness offered by solid state drives (SSDs), it’s hard to go back to traditional hard disk drives (HDDs) for your data needs. Western Digital is hoping to go after mainstream customers that are looking for a quick and easy speed boost with its new WD Blue and WD Green SSDs. The WD Blue series is available in both 2.5-inch and M.2 2280 form-factors in 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities. Western Digital says that the drives — which are targeted at both desktop and notebook users — offer sequential read and write speeds of 545 MB/sec and 525 MB/sec respectively and offer an endurance rating of 400 terabytes written (TBW). The 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB offerings...
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Western Digital is stepping up its efforts in the prosumer NAS market with the introduction of the My Cloud EX2 Ultra series. The My Cloud EX2 Ultra is designed for prosumers and creative professionals alike, and offers an easy way to backup data, sync files across multiple computers and share files with others. Western Digital has empowered the My Cloud EX2 Ultra with a Marvell ARMADA 385 1.3GHz dual-core processor that is paired with 1GB of DDR3 memory. This should help the My Cloud EX2 Ultra in multitasking operations and gives it enough grunt to serve as a Plex Media Server (I just wouldn’t call on it to handle transcoding operations). RAID 0, RAID 1, JBOD and spanning modes are supported...
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The Western Digital Passport Wireless is a member of a new class of storage devices that combine run-of-the-mill USB storage with wireless hotspot and media center functionality. These devices essentially marry what used to be two separate drives - an external USB device and a media device that can stream data wirelessly to connected devices. They also help address the relatively small amount of storage that is included with today's mobile devices, as they let you store and access terabytes of data on your smartphone or tablet without having to store it locally. It's an interesting combination, and very useful if you're the type of person who is constantly passing your external drive around to...
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The hard drive market has become a lot less sexy in the past few years thanks to SSDs. What we used to consider "fast" for a hard drive is relatively slow compared to even the cheapest of today's solid state drives. But there are two areas where hard drives still rule the roost, and that's in terms of overall capacity and cost per gigabyte. Right now you can buy a 4TB hard drive for the same cost as a 256GB SSD, so the two are in separate universes in that regard. We love SSDs and think just about everyone should run their OS on one, but most aren't large enough to hold all user data over a long period of time, so we still need hard drives for bulk storage duties, and will continue to need them...
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Western Digital’s original My Cloud personal cloud storage solution brought a unique approach to the NAS segment, for individuals and the SOHO crowd, and the subsequent multi-bay My Cloud EX4 offered a beastly amount of storage--8TB, 12TB, or 16TB--via the same “My Cloud” platform. WD introduced the My Cloud EX2 as something of a ‘tweener' solution, bringing a two-bay option that isn’t as hard on the wallet as the EX4 yet offers a copious amount of storage capacity and more powerful features such as RAID... WD My Cloud EX2 Personal Cloud Server Review...
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Western Digital’s original My Cloud personal cloud storage solution brought a unique approach to the NAS segment, for individuals and the SOHO crowd, and the subsequent multi-bay My Cloud EX4 offered a beastly amount of storage--8TB, 12TB, or 16TB--via the same “My Cloud” platform. WD introduced the My Cloud EX2 as something of a ‘tweener' solution, bringing a two-bay option that isn’t as hard on the wallet as the EX4 yet offers a copious amount of storage capacity and more powerful features such as RAID. Even with a few more choice features on board, the My Cloud EX2 is designed to be as simple to set up and manage as the original single-bay My Cloud....
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There’s a new member of WD’s My Cloud family, and it’s designed to fill the niche between the consumer-level My Cloud personal cloud storage device we reviewed a few months ago and the more professional-leaning My Cloud EX4 (with up to 16TB of storage capacity). The My Cloud EX2 lands somewhere in the middle and offers up to 8TB of storage. WD sells the device with an empty chassis or loaded up with WD Red drives. If 4TB, 6TB,or 8TB somehow isn’t enough for you, you can connect additional storage via the USB 3.0 port on the back. WD My Cloud EX2 What WD offers with the My Cloud platform generally and the EX2 specifically is a personal, private cloud. The device runs NASware...
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Cloud storage has emerged as a hugely attractive option for consumers and businesses alike. Consumer cloud storage darling Dropbox has gotten big enough that it warrants its own developer conference, Box is consistently innovating in the business space, Amazon’s storage cloud is massive and popular, and we could go on and on with numerous other companies offering all types of cloud storage services. Even as cloud storage has exploded, however, there are many skeptics who believe that entrusting your data to a cloud service is foolish, due to reliability, privacy and security concerns. Diehard proponents of local storage have legitimate concerns when they say they’re distrustful of...
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Cloud storage has emerged as a hugely attractive option for consumers and businesses alike. Consumer cloud storage darling Dropbox has gotten big enough that it warrants its own developer conference, Box is consistently innovating in the business space, Amazon’s storage cloud is massive and popular, and we could go on and on with numerous other companies offering all types of cloud storage services. Even as cloud storage has exploded, however, there are many skeptics who believe that entrusting your data to a cloud service is foolish. For one thing, you’re giving your precious data (be it family photos or company trade secrets) to a third party, and beyond that...
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In the data center, every little bit that saves on cooling or power consumption helps, and to that end Western Digital’s HGST brand is shipping a new hard drive that’s designed for higher-capacity storage, higher storage density, lower power consumption, and lower cooling requirements. The HGST 6TB Ultrastar He6 features the company’s 7Stac disk design, claiming 50% higher capacity in a standard 3.5-inch form factor over competitive 5-platter, 4TB drives. As we first wrote about last year, though, the premier feature of the new HGST platform is that it’s filled with helium (helium!). The Ultrastar He6 is hermetically sealed with HGST’s HelioSeal process and filled...
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