Jump to content

Western Digital

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Not to be confused with Western Design Center.

Western Digital Corporation
FormerlyGeneral Digital Corporation (1970–1971)
Company typePublic
IndustryComputer storage
FoundedApril 23, 1970; 54 years ago (1970-04-23) in Newport Beach, California
FounderAlvin B. Phillips
Headquarters
San Jose, California
,
U.S.
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
David Goeckeler (CEO)[1]
Products
Brands
RevenueDecrease US$12.3 billion (2023)
Decrease US$−1.3 billion (2023)
Decrease US$−1.7 billion (2023)
Total assetsDecrease US$24.4 billion (2023)
Total equityDecrease US$10.8 billion (2023)
Number of employees
c. 53,000 (2023)
Websitewesterndigital.com
Footnotes / references
Financials as of June 30, 2023.[2]

Western Digital Corporation is an American data storage company headquartered in San Jose, California. It has a decades-long history in the electronics industry as an integrated circuit and data memory technology developer. It is one of the world’s largest computer hard disk drive (HDD) manufacturers, along with producing solid-state drives (SSDs) and flash memory devices.

The company produces its data storage products for everyday users, gamers, creative professionals and small businesses up to enterprises and public clouds. Its portfolio of digital storage includes internal[3][4] and external drives[5][6] for desktop, mobile, photography, gaming, security, data centers and artificial intelligence (AI). Its competitors include the data management and storage companies Seagate Technology and Micron Technology.

Western Digital develops and delivers its HDDs, SSDs, memory cards,[7] NVMe,[8] NAS,[9][10] RAID[11] and other memory technology solutions under its Western Digital, SanDisk, SanDisk Professional, WD and WD_BLACK brands. The company holds approximately 13,000 active patents and maintains a global presence with 12+ manufacturing facilities and other operations in more than 30 countries.

History

[edit]
Western Digital logo history
Logo used from 1970 to 1971
Logo used from 1971 to 1991
Logo used from 1991 to 1997
Logo used from 1997 to 2004
Logo used from 2004 to 2017
Logo used from 2017 to 2022
Current logo

1970s

[edit]
First headquarters of Western Digital (then General Digital) in Newport Beach, California, pictured in 1971

Western Digital was founded on April 23, 1970, by Alvin B. Phillips, a Motorola employee, as General Digital Corporation, initially a manufacturer of MOS test equipment.[12] It was originally based in Newport Beach, California,[13] shortly thereafter moving to Santa Ana, California, and would go on to become one of the largest technology firms headquartered in Orange County.[14] It rapidly became a specialty semiconductor maker, with start-up capital provided by several individual investors and industrial giant Emerson Electric. Around July 1971, it adopted its current name and soon introduced its first product, the WD1402A UART.

During the early 1970s, the company focused on making and selling calculator chips, and by 1975, Western Digital was the largest independent calculator chip maker in the world. The oil crisis of the mid-1970s and the bankruptcy of its biggest calculator customer, Bowmar Instrument,[15] changed its fortunes, however, and in 1976 Western Digital declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. After this, Emerson Electric withdrew their support of the company. Chuck Missler joined Western Digital as chairman and chief executive in June 1977, and became the largest shareholder of Western Digital.

In 1973, Western Digital established its Malaysian plant, initially to manufacture semiconductors.[16]

Western Digital introduced several products during the late 1970s, including the MCP-1600 multi-chip, microcoded CPU. The MCP-1600 was used to implement DEC's LSI-11 system, the WD16, and their own Pascal MicroEngine microcomputer which ran the UCSD p-System Version III and UCSD Pascal. However, the WD integrated circuit that arguably drove Western's forward integration was the FD1771,[17] one of the first single-chip floppy disk drive formatter/controllers, which could replace significant amounts of TTL logic.

1980s

[edit]

The FD1771 and its kin were Western Digital's first entry into the data storage industry; by the early 1980s, they were making hard disk drive controllers, and in 1983, they won the contract to provide IBM with controllers for the PC/AT. That controller, the WD1003, became the basis of the ATA interface (which Western Digital developed along with Compaq and Control Data Corporation's MPI division, now owned by Seagate Technology), starting in 1986. Throughout most of the 1980s, the family of controllers based on the WD1003 provided the bulk of Western Digital's revenues and profits, and for a time generated enormous corporate growth.

Western Digital Paradise VGA card, 8-bit ISA bus, circa 1989
WD33C93 single-chip SCSI interface

Much of the mid-to-late 1980s saw an effort by Western Digital to use the profits from their ATA storage controllers to become a general-purpose OEM hardware supplier for the PC industry. As a result, Western Digital purchased a number of hardware companies. These included graphics cards (through its Paradise Systems subsidiary, purchased 1986, which later became Western Digital Imaging), core logic chipsets (by purchasing Faraday Electronics Inc. in 1987), SCSI controller chips for disk and tape devices (by purchasing ADSI in 1986), networking (WD8003, WD8013 Ethernet and WD8003S StarLAN). They did well (especially Paradise, which produced one of the best VGA cards of the era), but storage-related chips and disk controllers were their biggest money makers. In 1986, they introduced the WD33C93 single-chip SCSI interface, which was used in the first 16-bit bus mastering SCSI host adapter, the WD7000 "FASST"; in 1987 they introduced the WD37C65, a single-chip implementation of the PC/AT's floppy disk controller circuitry, and the grandfather of modern super I/O chips; in 1988 they introduced the WD42C22 "Vanilla", the first single-chip ATA hard disk controller.

1988 also brought what would be the biggest change in Western Digital's history. That year, Western Digital bought the hard drive production assets of PC hardware maker Tandon; the first products of that union under Western Digital's own name were the "Centaur" series of ATA and XT attachment drives.[18]

1990s

[edit]
Western Digital Tidbit 60 (WDAH260) - 62.3 MB (2.5 inch drive mounted in 3.5 inch adapter bracket)
Western Digital Caviar 80 MB (model number WDAC280-32), from a series of HDDs for desktop PCs; it is a 3.5-inch HDD mounted onto a 5.25-inch adapter bracket.

By 1991, things were starting to slow down, as the PC industry moved from ST-506 and ESDI drives to ATA and SCSI, and thus were buying fewer hard disk controller boards. That year saw the rise of Western Digital's Caviar drives, brand new designs that used the latest in embedded servo and computerized diagnostic systems.

Eventually, the successful sales of the Caviar drives resulted in Western Digital starting to sell some of its divisions. Paradise was sold to Philips, and since disappeared. Its networking and floppy drive controller divisions went to SMC Networks and its SCSI chip business went to Future Domain, which was later bought out by market leader Adaptec. Around 1995, the technological lead that the Caviar drives had enjoyed was eclipsed by newer offerings from other companies, especially Quantum Corp., and Western Digital fell into a slump.

In 1994, Western Digital began producing hard drives at its Malaysian factory, employing 13,000 people.[16]

Products and ideas of this time did not go far. The Portfolio drive (a 3-inch (76 mm) form factor model, developed with JT Storage) was a flop, as was the SDX hard disk to CD-ROM interface. Western Digital's drives started to slip further behind competing products, and quality began to suffer; system builders and PC enthusiasts who used to recommend Western Digital above all else, were going to the competition, particularly Maxtor, whose products had improved significantly by the late 1990s.

In an attempt to turn the tide in 1998, Western Digital recruited the help of IBM. This agreement gave Western Digital the rights to use certain IBM technologies, including giant magneto-resistive (GMR) heads and access to IBM production facilities. The result was the Expert line of drives, introduced in early 1999. The idea worked, and Western Digital regained respect in the press and among users, even despite a recall in 2000 (which was due to bad motor driver chips). Western Digital later broke ties with IBM.

2000s

[edit]
Western Digital WD740GD 74 GB Raptor, a 10,000 rpm 3.5-inch HDD
drive platter, Western Digital Caviar SE16 SATA 3.5-inch Hard Disk Drive

In 2001, Western Digital became the first manufacturer to offer mainstream ATA hard disk drives with 8 MiB of disk buffer. At that time, most desktop hard disk drives had 2 MB of buffer. Western Digital labeled these 8 MB models as "Special Edition" and distinguished them with the JB code (the 2 MB models had the BB code). The first 8 MB cache drive was the 100 GB WD1000JB, followed by other models starting with 40 GB capacity. Western Digital advertised the JB models for cost-effective file servers. In October 2001, Western Digital restated its prior year results to reflect the adoption of SEC Staff Accounting Bulletin No.101 and the reclassification of Connex and SANavigator results as discontinued operations.[19]

In 2003, Western Digital acquired most of the assets of bankrupt one-time market leading magnetic hard drive read-write head developer Read-Rite Corporation for $95 million.[20] In the same year, Western Digital offered the first 10,000 rpm Serial ATA HDD, the WD360GD "Raptor", with a capacity of 36 GB and an average access time of less than six milliseconds. Soon, the 74 GB WD740GD followed, which was also much quieter. In 2004, Western Digital redesigned its logo for the first time since 1997, with the design of new logo focusing on the company's initials ("WD").[21] In 2005, Western Digital released a 150 GB version, the WD1500ADFD, which was also available in a special version with a transparent window enabling the user to see the drive's heads move over the platters while the drive read and wrote data (Raptor X, WD1500AHFD). The biggest capacity 3,5 inch Raptor is the WD1600ADFD, with 160 GB of disk space. As of 2004, the Western Digital Raptor drives have a five-year warranty, making them a more attractive choice for inexpensive storage servers, where a large number of drives in constant use increases the likelihood of a drive failure.

In 2006, Western Digital introduced its My Book line of mass market external hard drives that feature a compact book-like design. On October 7, 2007, Western Digital released several editions of a single 1 TB hard drive, the largest in its My Book line.

In 2007, Western Digital acquired magnetic media maker Komag. Also in the same year, Western Digital adopted perpendicular recording technology in its line of notebook and desktop drives. This allowed it to produce notebook and desktop drives in the largest classes of the time. Western Digital also started to produce the energy efficient GP (Green Power) range of drives.

In 2007, Western Digital announced the WD GP drive touting rotational speed "between 7200 and 5400 rpm", which is technically correct while also being misleading; the drive spins at 5405 rpm, and the Green Power spin speed is not variable.[22] WD GP drives are programmed to unload the heads whenever idle for a very short period of time.[23] Many Linux installations write to the file system a few times a minute in the background.[24] As a result, there may be 100 or more load cycles per hour, and the 300,000 load cycles rating of a WD GP drive may be exceeded in less than a year.[25]

Two third-generation 1 TB VelociRaptors in IcePack mounting frames

On April 21, 2008, Western Digital announced the next generation of its 10,000 rpm SATA WD Raptor series of hard drives. The new drives, called WD VelociRaptor, featured 300 GB capacity and 2.5-inch (64 mm) platters enclosed in the IcePack, a 3.5-inch (89 mm) mounting frame with a built-in heat sink. Western Digital said that the new drives are 35 percent faster than the previous generation. On September 12, 2008, Western Digital shipped a 500 GB 2.5-inch (64 mm) notebook hard drive which is part of their Scorpio Blue series of notebook hard drives.

On January 27, 2009, Western Digital shipped the first 2 TB internal hard disk drive.[26] On March 30, 2009, they entered the solid-state drive market with the acquisition of Siliconsystems, Inc. Its acquisition was unsuccessful, and few years later Western Digital discontinued all solid-state storage products based on Siliconsystems design (SiliconEdge and SiliconDrive families of SSDs and memory cards), but its inventions was used later in development of various other solid-state storage products, with larger developments going on after 2016 acquisition of SanDisk.

On July 27, 2009, Western Digital announced the first 1 TB mobile hard disk drive, which shipped as both a Passport series portable USB drive as well as a Scorpio Blue series notebook drive.[citation needed]

In October 2009, Western Digital announced the shipment of first 3 TB internal hard disk drive, which has 750 GB-per-platter density with SATA interface.[27]

2010s

[edit]

In March 2011, Western Digital agreed to acquire parts of the storage unit of Hitachi, HGST, for about $4.3 billion of which $3.5 billion was paid in cash and the rest with 25 million shares of Western Digital.[28]

Western Digital "Red" 4 TB, a NAS-optimized 3.5-inch SATA HDD

In 2011, Western Digital established an R&D facility at its Malaysian plant at a cost of 1.2 billion US dollars.[16]

In March 2012, Western Digital completed the acquisition of HGST and became the largest traditional hard drive manufacturer in the world. To address the requirements of regulatory agencies, in May 2012 Western Digital divested assets to manufacture and sell certain 3.5-inch hard drives for the desktop and consumer electronics markets to Toshiba, in exchange for one of its 2.5-inch hard drive factories in Thailand.[29]

In December 2013, Western Digital stopped manufacturing parallel ATA hard disk drives for laptops (2.5-inch form factor) and desktop PCs (3.5-inch form factor). Until that time, they were last hard disk manufacturer to produce PATA hard disk drives.[30] Furthermore, they were the only manufacturer that had 250 GB and 320 GB in 2.5-inch form factor.

In February 2014, Western Digital announced a new "Purple" line of hard disk drives for use in video surveillance systems, with capacities from 1 to 4 TB. They feature internal optimizations for applications that involve near-constant disk writing, and "AllFrame" technology which is designed to reduce write errors.[31]

A red redesigned My Passport Ultra Drive with a storage of 2TB

In October 2015, after being required to operate the company autonomously from WD, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce issued a decision allowing the company to begin integrating HGST into its main business, but under the condition that it maintain the HGST brand and sales team for at least two more years.[32] The HGST brand was phased out in 2018, and since then, all HGST-branded products are just branded Western Digital.

In May 2016, Western Digital acquired SanDisk for US$19 billion.[33][34] In the summer of 2017, Western Digital licensed the Fusion-io/SanDisk ION Accelerator software to One Stop Systems.[35]

In 2016, HGST closed its Malaysian plant.[16]

In April 2017, Western Digital moved its headquarters from Irvine, California to HGST's headquarters in San Jose, California.[36]

In August 2017, Western Digital bought cloud storage provider Upthere, with the intention to continue building out the service.[37]

In September 2017, Western Digital acquired Tegile Systems, maker of flash memory storage arrays.[38] Western Digital rebranded Tegile as IntelliFlash[39] and sold it to DataDirect Networks in September 2019.[40][41]

In October 2017, Western Digital shipped the world's first 14 TB HDD, the helium-filled HGST Ultrastar Hs14.[42][43]

In December 2017, Western Digital reached an agreement with Toshiba about the sale of the jointly owned NAND production facility in Japan.[44] In June 2018, Western Digital acquired Wearable, Inc., a small company based in the Chicago area that produced the SanDisk Wireless Drive and SanDisk Connect Wireless Stick, which were derived from Wearable Inc.’s AirStash wireless server platform.

In May 2018, Toshiba reached an agreement with the Bain consortium about the sale of that chip unit.[45]

In July 2018, Western Digital announced their plan to close their hard disk production facility in Kuala Lumpur to shift the company towards flash drive production, leaving the company with just two HDD production facilities in Thailand.[16] The company ranked 158th on the 2018 Fortune 500 of the largest United States corporations by revenue.[46]

In June 2019, Kioxia experienced a power cut at one of its factories in Yokkaichi, Japan, resulting in the loss of at least 6 exabytes of flash memory, with some sources estimating the loss as high as 15 exabytes. Western Digital used (and still uses) Kioxia's facilities for making its own flash memory chips.[47][48][49][50]

2020s

[edit]
WD Elements Portable with 2TB of storage from 2022

In November 2020, Western Digital produced a new consumer SSD, the WD Black SN850 1TB. Using a proprietary NVMe version 1.4 controller ("G2"), it is reported to outperform Samsung's 980 Pro 1TB as well as other, new-to-market SSDs containing the Phison E18 controller that arrived after the SN850 became available. The only higher-performing SSD at that time was Intel's Optane line, which is a non-consumer, workstation/server-based SSD with a cost of over five times the SN850.[51][52][53]

In June 2021, users reported that their My Book Live NAS drives, which were discontinued products last manufactured in 2013, had been erased, leading to the company advising that the devices be disconnected from the internet.[54]

In August 2021, Western Digital and Japanese memory-chip supplier Kioxia (formerly Toshiba Memory) began working out the details of a merger to be finalized in September 2021.[55][56] In October of the same year, it became clear that the merger talks stalled.[57]

In February 2022, Western Digital and Kioxia reported that contamination issues have affected the output of their flash memory joint-production factories, with WD admitting that at least 6.5 exabytes of memory output being affected. The Kiakami and Yokkaichi factories in Japan stopped producing due to the contamination.[58]

WD experienced a cyberattack breaching the company's systems on March 23, 2023. On April 2, the company proactively took some services offline, including My Cloud, to examine the extent of the intrusion. The hackers allegedly stole around 10 TB of data from the company, including customer information, and demanded a ransom of "minimum 8 figures" to not publish the stolen data.[59][60]

Merger talks with Kioxia resumed in 2023,[61][62] but was called off after Kioxia's largest shareholder Bain Capital and indirect shareholder SK Hynix declared their opposition to the deal in October.[63] In the October earnings call, Western Digital announced it would spin off its flash memory business, effectively reversing the SanDisk merger by the second half of 2024.[64]

On May 16, 2024, Western Digital announced the world's first 6 TB external hard disk drive in 2.5 inch form factor.[65]

Products

[edit]

Storage devices

[edit]

Western Digital's offerings include HDDs and SSDs for computing devices (e.g. PCs, security surveillance systems, gaming consoles and set-top boxes); NAND-flash embedded storage products for mobile devices, notebook PCs and other portable and IoT devices; and NAND flash memory wafers.[66][67] Western Digital's embedded storage devices include the iNAND product line and custom embedded products.[68] Western Digital also provides microSD and SD card products to OEMs only for automotive and industrial applications.[69]

Use case classes

[edit]

Western Digital color-codes certain storage devices based on their intended use case:[70][71]

Color/branding Use case HDD warranty length (years)[72]
  WD Green Eco-friendly 2
  WD Blue General desktop 2
  WD Purple Surveillance 3
  WD Purple Pro Surveillance 5
  WD Red Network-attached storage 3
  WD Red Plus Network-attached storage 3
  WD Red Pro Network-attached storage 5
  WD_BLACK High-performance/gaming desktop 5
  WD Gold Enterprise 5
  WD Ultrastar Data center 5
  Internal use External USB enclosures 2 to 3 (together with drive enclosure)

WD Green drives are energy efficient and are currently only available as an SSD. The WD Green HDD series was discontinued in 2015, and instead merged with WD Blue.[73][74][75][76]

WD Purple hard drives are designed for write-heavy workloads; for instance, security applications (e.g. recording video). These drives feature AllFrame technology, which attempts to reduce video frame loss, time limited error recovery, and support for the ATA streaming command set.[77]

WD brand

[edit]
WD Elements Portable with 2TB of storage from 2016

Western Digital also sells external hard drives under the WD brand, with product families called My Passport, My Book, WD Elements, and Easystore.[78] While traditionally these products have used HDDs, Western Digital has started to offer SSD versions, such as the My Passport SSD, its first portable SSD.[79] Western Digital external hard drives with encryption software (sold under the My Passport brand) have been reported to have severe data protection faults and to be easy to decrypt.[80][81][82]

As of 2019, the WD Elements line consists of WD Elements Portable (1-5TB, 4.3 × 3.2 × 0.5 inch),[78] WD Elements Desktop (3-14 TB, 5.3 × 1.8 × 6.5 inch),[83] and WD Elements SE.

SanDisk

[edit]
Main article: SanDisk

Under the SanDisk brand, Western Digital offers mobile storage products, cards and readers, USB flash drives, SSDs and MP3 players. Most of Western Digital's consumer flash memory products are offered through SanDisk. The SanDisk iXpand product family, including the iXpand Flash Drive and iXpand Base, is made specifically for use with the Apple iPhone and iPad.[84][85][86] The 400 GB SanDisk Ultra microSDXC UHS-I card was designed primarily for use in Android smartphones that include an expansion slot.[87][88]

SanDisk Professional

[edit]
Main article: SanDisk Professional

Under the SanDisk Professional brand, Western Digital offers HDD, SSD, platforms and systems products designed specifically for creative professionals.[89][90] It has partnerships with Apple,[91] Atomos,[92][93] and Intel.[94]

Other products

[edit]

After first offering the Western Digital Media Center in 2004 (which was actually only a storage device), Western Digital offered the WD TV series of products between 2008 and 2016. The WD TV series of products functioned as a home theater PC, able to play videos, images, and music from USB drives or network locations.

Western Digital offers the My Cloud series of products, which function as home media servers.

In September 2015, Western Digital released My Cloud OS 3, a platform that enables connected HDDs to sync between PCs and mobile devices.[95][96]

Through Western Digital's acquisition of Upthere, the company offers personal cloud storage through the Upthere Home app and UpOS operating system.[97][98]

Western Digital sells data center hardware and software[99] including an enterprise-class Ultrastar product line[100] that was previously sold under the HGST brand. Current hardware products include the 20 TB CMR helium-filled HC560, the 20 TB SMR helium-filled HC650, and the 6.4 TB U.2 NVMe SN840 SSD.

Legacy product lines

[edit]

Some of Western Digital's old product lines that are no longer produced include:

  • Tidbit
  • Caviar
  • Expert
  • Raptor - High speed and high performance HDDs with speeds of 10,000 RPM.
  • VelociRaptor - 2.5 inch version of Raptor.
  • S25 (Rebranded to XE) - SAS version of VelociRaptor.
  • Scorpio

Former products

[edit]

Western Digital manufactured wireless routers.[101] They discontinued its networking product line as of early 2014.[102]

Corporate affairs

[edit]

Western Digital Capital is Western Digital's investment arm.[103][104] It has contributed funding for data technology companies such as Elastifile and Avere Systems.[105][106][107]

Lawsuits

[edit]
See also: Binary prefix § Legal disputes

Lawsuits have been filed against various manufacturers including Western Digital,[108] related to the claimed capacity of their drives. The drives are labelled using the convention of 103 (1,000) bytes to the kilobyte, resulting in a perceived capacity shortfall when reported by most operating systems, which tend to use 210 (1,024) bytes to the kilobyte.[109]

While Western Digital maintained that they used "the indisputably correct industry standard for measuring and describing storage capacity", and that they "cannot be expected to reform the software industry", they agreed to settle in March 2006,[110] with a $30 refund to affected customers in the form of backup and recovery software of the same value.[109]

In May 2020, Western Digital was sued[111] for using shingled magnetic recording technology in its NAS line of consumer drives without explicitly informing consumers.[112] The lawsuit alleged that SMR technology is not suitable for the advertised use of the drives in a RAID array and intended to end any use of SMR in NAS drives.[113] Seagate, another data storage company and a direct competitor of Western Digital, stated that SMR is not suitable for NAS use and that Seagate uses only conventional magnetic recording in its NAS-oriented products.[114] In response to the controversy, Western Digital introduced a new naming scheme, in which "WD Red Plus" describes disks using conventional magnetic recording and "WD Red" means SMR.[115]

Acquisitions

[edit]
Acquisition date Company Product types Price Refs
June 29, 2007 Komag Hard disk media $1 billion [116]
March 8, 2012 HGST HDD, SSD $3.9 billion [117]
January 22, 2013 Arkeia Software Backup Software —
September 12, 2013 sTec SSD $340 million [118][119]
October 17, 2013 Virident SSD, system and software $685 million [120][121]
December 15, 2014 Skyera Flash-storage arrays  — [122]
March 16, 2015 Amplidata Software  — [123]
May 12, 2016 SanDisk SSD, system and software, NAND flash, embedded $19 billion [33]
August 28, 2017 Upthere Flash, persistent, cloud services  — [37]
September 2017 Tegile Flash, persistent, cloud services  — [124][125]
September 2019 Kazan Networks Flash storage technology  — [126]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Cisco exec David Goeckeler appointed CEO of Western Digital". ZDNet.
  2. ^ "US SEC: 2023 Form 10-K Western Digital Corporation". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. August 22, 2023. Retrieved August 22, 2023.
  3. ^ "Compare Internal HDDs". Western Digital. Retrieved October 24, 2024.
  4. ^ "Compare Internal SSDs". Sandisk. Retrieved October 24, 2024.
  5. ^ "Compare External HDDs". Western Digital. Retrieved October 24, 2024.
  6. ^ "Compare External SSDs". Sandisk. Retrieved October 24, 2024.
  7. ^ "Memory Cards & Card Readers Features & Benefits". Sandisk. Retrieved October 24, 2024.
  8. ^ "NVMe SSDs - Understanding the Benefits & Use Cases". Sandisk. Retrieved October 24, 2024.
  9. ^ "Network Attached Storage (NAS)". Western Digital. Retrieved October 24, 2024.
  10. ^ "Network Attached Storage with SSDs". Sandisk. Retrieved October 24, 2024.
  11. ^ "RAID Storage Solutions & RAID Arrays". Western Digital. Retrieved October 24, 2024.
  12. ^ Dunn, James (October 5, 2012). "Western Digital completes 77 layoffs at Fremont plant". San Francisco Business Times. Retrieved April 10, 2020.
  13. ^ "General Data Corporation advertisement" (PDF). Electronics: 49. May 10, 1971 – via World Radio History.
  14. ^ Chen, I-Chun (April 25, 2017). "Western Digital moves headquarters out of Los Angeles area". Los Angeles Business Journal. American City Business Journals.
  15. ^ Smith, William D. (February 11, 1975). "Bowmar Will Ask Reorganization". The New York Times. p. 55.
  16. ^ a b c d e Mellor, Chris (July 17, 2018). "Western Digital formats hard disk drive factory as demand spins down". The Register. Retrieved August 15, 2018.
  17. ^ Michalopoulos, Demetrios A (October 1976). "New Products: Single-chip floppy disk formatter/controller". Computer. 9 (10): 64. doi:10.1109/C-M.1976.218414."The FD1771 is a single-chip floppy disk formatter/controller that interfaces with most available disk drives and virtually all types of computers."
  18. ^ Culver, John. "History of Microprocessor Companies".
  19. ^ "Western Digital Reports $4 Million Profit in HDD Business on Revenue of $441 Million, Unit Shipments of 5.4 Million". October 25, 2001. Retrieved September 10, 2013.
  20. ^ Hoover's Handbook of American Business 2004. Vol. 2. Austin, Texas: Hoover's Business Press. 2003. pp. 875–876. ISBN 1-57311-088-4 – via Internet Archive.
  21. ^ "Western Digital Launches New Logo with Universal Appeal". October 6, 2004. Archived from the original on October 17, 2015. Retrieved August 21, 2015.
  22. ^ "WD Green Mobile Series Spec Sheet" (PDF). WDC. June 26, 2013. Retrieved January 21, 2013.
  23. ^ "hdparm(8) - Linux manual page". man7.org. November 2012. Retrieved March 31, 2014. Get/set the Western Digital (WD) Green Drive's "idle3" timeout value. This timeout controls how often the drive parks its heads and enters a low power consumption state. The factory default is eight seconds, which is a very poor choice for use with Linux. Leaving it at the default will result in hundreds of thousands of head load/unload cycles in a very short period of time.
  24. ^ "discussion list". Arch Linux. If linux tends to write to /var/log/* every 30s, then the heads can park/unpark every 30s.
  25. ^ WD Green Spec Sheet (PDF), WD
  26. ^ "Western Digital launches 2TB hard drive". ZDNet. January 27, 2009. Archived from the original on August 2, 2012. Retrieved January 27, 2009.
  27. ^ "WD's New 3TB Drive Packs More Storage Than 32-Bit Can Handle". WIRED. October 19, 2010. Retrieved January 22, 2016.
  28. ^ Yasu, Mariko; Shiraki, Maki; Thomson, Amy (March 7, 2011). "Hitachi Rises on $4.3 Billion Sale of Hard-Drive Unit to Western Digital". Bloomberg. Bloomberg L.P. Retrieved July 17, 2013.
  29. ^ Ngo, Dong (February 28, 2012). "Toshiba to acquire Western Digital's 3.5-inch HDD manufacturing equipment". CNET. Retrieved May 30, 2018.
  30. ^ "Western Digital to Stop Shipping PATA Hard Drives". TechPowerUp. December 23, 2013. Retrieved December 22, 2014.
  31. ^ "WD says its new Purple hard drives are optimized for 24/7 video surveillance". PC World. IDG. February 25, 2014. Retrieved October 1, 2016.
  32. ^ "China finally says yes to WD-HGST union". The Register. Retrieved December 18, 2018.
  33. ^ a b "Western Digital to acquire SanDisk for $19B". USA Today. Gannett Company. October 21, 2015. Retrieved October 22, 2015.
  34. ^ "Western Digital officially closes SanDisk acquisition". The Verge. Vox Media. May 12, 2016. Retrieved August 3, 2016.
  35. ^ Tom Matson (August 8, 2017). "Building a True Data Solution". InsideHPC. Retrieved June 6, 2018.
  36. ^ Elias, Jennifer (April 25, 2017). "Amid job cuts, Western Digital moves HQ to San Jose". Silicon Valley Business Journal. American City Business Journals. Retrieved July 7, 2017.
  37. ^ a b Kastrenakes, Jacob (August 28, 2017). "Western Digital buys Upthere to build better cloud storage features". The Verge.
  38. ^ Gagliordi, Natalie (August 29, 2017). "Western Digital buys flash storage company Tegile Systems". ZDNet. Retrieved November 17, 2017.
  39. ^ "Tintri saviour to acquire former Tegile business". CRN. September 23, 2019. Retrieved April 28, 2020.
  40. ^ Mellor, Chris (September 20, 2019). "Western Digital: We're just about DDN with these data centre systems". The Register. Retrieved February 11, 2020.
  41. ^ "DDN Announces Acquisition of Intelliflash Enterprise Storage Business Unit From Western Digital". DDN. September 19, 2019. Retrieved August 4, 2020.
  42. ^ Lilly, Paul (October 3, 2017). "Western Digital's mega-capacity 14TB helium-filled hard drive is now shipping". PC Gamer. Retrieved June 1, 2018.
  43. ^ Whitwam, Ryan (October 4, 2017). "Western Digital Launches World's First 14TB Hard Drive". ExtremeTech. Retrieved June 1, 2018.
  44. ^ King, Ian (December 12, 2017). "Toshiba, Western Digital Settle Fight Over Chip Unit Sale". Bloomberg. Retrieved August 15, 2018.
  45. ^ "Toshiba completes $18 billion sale of chip unit to Bain consortium". Reuters. May 31, 2018. Retrieved August 15, 2018.
  46. ^ "Fortune 500 Companies 2018: Who Made the List". Fortune. Archived from the original on May 2, 2019. Retrieved November 21, 2018.
  47. ^ "Western Digital Comments on Power Outage in Yokkaichi Region and Impact to Yokkaichi Fab Operations". Western Digital. June 27, 2019. Retrieved April 10, 2020.
  48. ^ "Power outage causes Toshiba and Western Digital to lose 6 exabytes of NAND". TechSpot. July 2019.
  49. ^ "Western Digital Comments on Power Outage in Yokkaichi Region and Impact to Yokkaichi Fab Operations". www.businesswire.com. June 27, 2019.
  50. ^ "Power outage may have ruined 15 exabytes of WD and Toshiba flash storage". AppleInsider. July 2019.
  51. ^ "So Long Samsung, Hello WD Black SN850 - PC Perspective". November 9, 2020.
  52. ^ "WD_Black SN850 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD Review – Vying for That Top Spot". November 19, 2020.
  53. ^ "WD Black SN850 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD Review | TweakTown". November 9, 2020.
  54. ^ ""I'm totally screwed." WD My Book Live users wake up to find their data deleted". June 24, 2021.
  55. ^ Cara Lombardo; Dana Cimilluca (August 25, 2021). "Western Digital in Advanced Talks to Merge With Kioxia in $20 Billion-Plus Deal". The Wall Street Journal.
  56. ^ "Western Digital Is in Talks to Combine With Japan's Kioxia". Bloomberg.com. August 25, 2021. Retrieved January 27, 2022.
  57. ^ Krystal Hu; Makiko Yamazaki; Tiyashi Datta (October 21, 2021). "Merger talks between Western Digital and Kioxia stall". Reuters.
  58. ^ King, Ian (February 9, 2022). "Western Digital, Kioxia Say Contamination Hurt Chip Output". Bloomberg News. Retrieved February 11, 2022.
  59. ^ Franceschi-Bicchierai, Lorenzo (April 13, 2023). "Hackers claim vast access to Western Digital systems". TechCrunch.
  60. ^ Kan, Michael (April 13, 2023). "After 10 Days, Western Digital's My Cloud Finally Restored Following Hack". PCMag.
  61. ^ "Japanese chipmaker Kioxia and U.S.-based Western Digital in detailed merger talks". The Japan Times. June 2, 2023.
  62. ^ Fuse, Taro; Suzuki, Hideki; Baker, Liana (September 19, 2023). "Chip Memory Firm Kioxia's Banks Prep $14 Billion Loan for Western Digital Merger". Bloomberg News.
  63. ^ "Western Digital and Kioxia scrap memory chip merger talks". Nikkei Asia. October 26, 2023.
  64. ^ A, Samrhitha; Soni, Aditya (October 30, 2023). "Western Digital to split flash memory unit, refinance debt". Reuters.
  65. ^ Western Digital Unveils World’s Highest Capacity 2.5” Portable HDDs, Boosting Its Most Popular Product Portfolios
  66. ^ "Products". Western Digital. Retrieved June 1, 2018.
  67. ^ Mellor, Chris (April 28, 2018). "High-cap enterprise hard drives stream dosh into Western Digital". The Register. Retrieved June 1, 2018.
  68. ^ Kingsley-Hughes, Adrian (December 5, 2017). "Western Digital paves the way for next-gen 'Big Data/Fast Data' smartphones". ZDNet. Retrieved June 1, 2018.
  69. ^ Locklear, Mallory (October 5, 2017). "SanDisk's 'Industrial' SD cards can withstand extreme temperatures". Engadget. Retrieved June 1, 2018.
  70. ^ "Western Digital Drives: Colour Coding Explained". March 2, 2020.
  71. ^ "Western Digital HDD Colors Explained « HDDMag". November 23, 2016.
  72. ^ "Warranty Policy | WD Support".
  73. ^ "WD Green PC SSD". Western Digital. Retrieved June 1, 2018.
  74. ^ Tallis, Billy (October 11, 2016). "Western Digital Introduces WD Blue And WD Green SSDs". AnandTech. Retrieved June 1, 2018.
  75. ^ Shilov, Anton (September 21, 2015). "Western Digital to abandon 'Green' brand in favour of 'Blue' HDDs". Kit Guru. Retrieved June 1, 2018.
  76. ^ "Western Digital converts Green hard drives to Blue in branding makeover". TechSpot. October 29, 2015. Retrieved December 9, 2021.
  77. ^ "WD Blue vs. Black vs. Red & Purple HDD & SSD Differences (2017)". GamersNexus. Retrieved March 7, 2019.
  78. ^ a b "Save on Components at Newegg: Intel Core i9-9900K Only $430, 2TB WD Elements for $60". PCMAG. Retrieved August 5, 2020.
  79. ^ Gartenberg, Chaim (April 6, 2017). "Western Digital announces its first portable SSD". The Verge. Retrieved June 2, 2018.
  80. ^ Cox, Joseph (October 20, 2015). "Some Popular 'Self Encrypting' Hard Drives Have Really Bad Encryption". Motherboard. Retrieved May 15, 2017.
  81. ^ Thomson, Iain (October 20, 2015). "Western Digital's hard drive encryption is useless. Totally useless". The Register. Retrieved June 10, 2020.
  82. ^ Goodin, Dan (October 20, 2015). "Western Digital self-encrypting hard drives riddled with security flaws". The Register. Retrieved June 10, 2020.
  83. ^ "WD Elements Desktop - Product information". shop.westerndigital.com. Retrieved August 5, 2020.
  84. ^ Heater, Brian (April 25, 2016). "Hands on with SanDisk's iPhone storage-expanding flash drive". TechCrunch. Retrieved June 2, 2018.
  85. ^ Fuller, Leanne (July 11, 2017). "Sandisk iXpand flash drive fits iPhone lightning charge port". WPSD Local 6. Retrieved June 2, 2018.
  86. ^ Smith, Lyle (August 31, 2017). "WD Announces SanDisk iXpand Base For iPhone & 400GB microSD Card". Storage Review. Retrieved June 2, 2018.
  87. ^ Mellor, Chris (August 31, 2017). "SanDisk's little microSD card sucks up 400GB". The Register. Retrieved June 2, 2018.
  88. ^ Etherington, Darrell (August 31, 2017). "SanDisk's 400GB microSD card is an Android phone's best friend". TechCrunch. Retrieved June 2, 2018.
  89. ^ Broussard, Mitchel (April 11, 2017). "Western Digital Reveals 'G-Drive USB-C' With High-Capacity Storage and MacBook Charging Capabilities". MacRumors. Retrieved June 2, 2018.
  90. ^ Ottke, Adam (September 8, 2015). "G-Technology's New Enclosures and Adapters Offer Increased Flexibility and Support for All Creative Workflows". Fstoppers. Retrieved June 2, 2018.
  91. ^ "G-Technology - Storage - Mac Accessories". Apple. Retrieved June 2, 2018.
  92. ^ Mindrum, Tucker (September 6, 2016). "G-TECHNOLOGY And Atomos Collaborate On Suite Of Products". Storage Review. Retrieved June 2, 2018.
  93. ^ Frazer, Bryant (September 6, 2016). "G-Technology Announces 4K Disk-Caddy Workflow for Atomos". Studio Daily. Retrieved June 2, 2018.
  94. ^ "G-Technology Ships the Industry's Highest-Capacity, Two-Drive, Raid 0, Thunderbolt Storage Solution". Business Wire (Press release). HGST. April 16, 2012. Retrieved June 2, 2018.
  95. ^ Armstrong, Adam (July 7, 2017). "WD Red 10TB Review". Storage Review. Retrieved June 2, 2018.
  96. ^ Smith, Lyle (August 18, 2017). "WD My Passport Ultra Review (4TB)". Storage Review. Retrieved June 2, 2018.
  97. ^ Miller, Matthew (July 29, 2016). "Upthere launches cloud service with a goal to replace your local storage". ZDNet. Retrieved June 2, 2018.
  98. ^ Spadafora, Anthony (August 31, 2017). "Western Digital buys cloud storage company Upthere". BetaNews. Retrieved June 2, 2018.
  99. ^ Dignan, Larry (November 15, 2016). "Western Digital's data center unit adds to scale-out storage portfolio". ZDNet. Retrieved June 1, 2018.
  100. ^ Wong, Wylie (October 12, 2017). "Western Digital Aims Largest Hard Drive Ever at World's Largest Data Centers". Data Center Knowledge. Retrieved June 1, 2018.
  101. ^ Western Digital enters the router market, higher-end models include built-in hard drives
  102. ^ WD My Net N900 HD Dual-Band Router Reviewed
  103. ^ "Company Overview of Western Digital Capital". Bloomberg. Retrieved June 3, 2018.
  104. ^ McGrath, Dylan (August 30, 2017). "Western Digital Buys Flash Array Vendor Tegile". EE Times. Retrieved June 3, 2018.
  105. ^ Mellor, Chris (September 6, 2017). "File software-flinger Elastifile stretches funding further to $65m". The Register. Retrieved June 3, 2018.
  106. ^ Sawers, Paul (March 21, 2017). "Hybrid cloud storage company Avere Systems raises $14 million from Google, Western Digital, others". VentureBeat. Retrieved June 3, 2018.
  107. ^ Clarke, Peter (September 11, 2017). "Western Digital backs processor-in-memory startup". eeNews Analog. Retrieved June 3, 2018.
  108. ^ Western Digital Settles Capacity Suit, betanews.com
  109. ^ a b Western Digital settles drive size lawsuit, arstechnica.com
  110. ^ Notice of Class Action and Proposed Settlement (“Notice”) Archived May 7, 2010, at the Wayback Machine, wdc.com
  111. ^ Salter, Jim (May 29, 2020). "Western Digital gets sued for sneaking SMR disks into its NAS channel". Ars Technica. Retrieved June 4, 2020.
  112. ^ Mellor, Chris (April 14, 2020). "Western Digital admits 2TB-6TB WD Red NAS drives use shingled magnetic recording". blocksandfiles.com. Retrieved June 4, 2020.
  113. ^ Salter, Jim (June 17, 2020). "Lawsuit vs. Western Digital wants to end any use of SMR in NAS drives". Ars Technica. Retrieved June 24, 2020.
  114. ^ Salter, Jim (April 21, 2020). "Seagate says Network Attached Storage and SMR don't mix". Ars Technica. Retrieved June 24, 2020.
  115. ^ Salter, Jim (June 24, 2020). "Western Digital adds "Red Plus" branding for non-SMR hard drives". Ars Technica. Retrieved June 24, 2020.
  116. ^ Ribeiro, John (June 29, 2007). "Western Digital buys platter maker Komag". The Register. Retrieved September 23, 2020.
  117. ^ Ribeiro, John (March 8, 2012). "Western Digital Closes Hitachi GST Acquisition, to Operate Separate Subsidiaries". PCWorld. Retrieved May 30, 2018.
  118. ^ Vättö, Kristian (June 24, 2013). "Western Digital Acquires STEC". AnandTech. Retrieved May 30, 2018.
  119. ^ Doulatramani, Chandni (June 24, 2013). "Western Digital buys Stec to build solid-state business". Reuters. Retrieved September 17, 2018.
  120. ^ Alawadhi, Neha (September 9, 2013). "Western Digital buys flash memory maker Virident, focus now on Fusion-io". Reuters. Retrieved May 30, 2018.
  121. ^ Dignan, Larry (September 9, 2013). "Western Digital buys Virident Systems for $685 million, bolsters enterprise efforts". ZDNet. Retrieved May 30, 2018.
  122. ^ Vatto, Kristian (December 15, 2014). "Western Digital to Acquire Skyera". AnandTech. Retrieved May 30, 2018.
  123. ^ Harris, Robin (March 3, 2015). "WD's HGST buys Amplidata". ZDNet. Retrieved May 30, 2018.
  124. ^ "Western Digital buys up Tegile Systems to add to its Data Center Systems business". V3. August 30, 2017. Retrieved May 30, 2018.
  125. ^ Mellor, Chris (July 27, 2018). "If you were a firm-swallowing storage giant, how WD you digest them all?". The Register. Retrieved August 15, 2018.
  126. ^ Kovar, Joseph F. (September 11, 2019). "Western Digital Acquires NVMe-oF Startup Kazan". CRN. Retrieved March 20, 2020.
[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Western Digital.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Western_Digital&oldid=1254261229"