Wikipedia

Western Digital

Not to be confused withWestern Design Center.

Western Digital Corporationis an American data storage company headquartered inSan 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 computerhard disk drive(HDD) manufacturers, along with producingsolid-state drives(SSDs) andflash memorydevices.

Western Digital Corporation
FormerlyGeneral Digital Corporation (1970–1971)
Company typePublic
IndustryComputer data storage
FoundedApril 23, 1970;54 years ago(1970-04-23)inNewport Beach, California
FounderAlvin B. Phillips
Headquarters
San Jose, California
,
U.S.
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
David Goeckeler (CEO)[1]
Products
Brands
RevenueIncreaseUS$13.0 billion(2024)
Negative increaseUS$−317 million(2024)
Negative increaseUS$−798 million(2024)
Total assetsDecreaseUS$24.2 billion(2024)
Total equityDecreaseUS$10.8 billion(2024)
Number of employees
51,000 (2024)
Websitewesterndigital
Footnotes / references
Financials as of June 28, 2024[2]

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 andartificial 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) inNewport Beach, California,pictured in 1971

Western Digital was founded on April 23, 1970, by Alvin B. Phillips, aMotorolaemployee, asGeneral Digital Corporation,initially a manufacturer ofMOStest equipment.[12]It was originally based inNewport Beach, California,[13]shortly thereafter moving toSanta Ana, California,and would go on to become one of the largest technology firms headquartered inOrange County.[14]It rapidly became a specialtysemiconductormaker, with start-up capital provided by several individual investors and industrial giantEmerson Electric.Around July 1971, it adopted its current name and soon introduced its first product, theWD1402AUART.

During the early 1970s, the company focused on making and sellingcalculatorchips, and by 1975, Western Digital was the largest independent calculator chip maker in the world. Theoil crisisof 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 Misslerjoined 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 theMCP-1600multi-chip,microcodedCPU.The MCP-1600 was used to implementDEC'sLSI-11system, theWD16,and their ownPascal MicroEnginemicrocomputer which ran theUCSD p-SystemVersion III andUCSD Pascal.However, the WD integrated circuit that arguably drove Western's forward integration was theFD1771,[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 makinghard disk drivecontrollers, and in 1983, they won the contract to provideIBMwith controllers for thePC/AT.That controller, theWD1003,became the basis of theATAinterface (which Western Digital developed along withCompaqandControl Data Corporation'sMPI division, now owned bySeagate 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 DigitalParadiseVGA card, 8-bitISAbus, circa 1989
WD33C93single-chipSCSIinterface

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-purposeOEMhardware supplier for the PC industry. As a result, Western Digital purchased a number of hardware companies. These includedgraphics cards(through itsParadise Systemssubsidiary, purchased 1986, which later became Western Digital Imaging), core logic chipsets (by purchasing Faraday Electronics Inc. in 1987),SCSIcontroller chips for disk andtape devices(by purchasing ADSI in 1986), networking (WD8003,WD8013EthernetandWD8003SStarLAN). They did well (especially Paradise, which produced one of the bestVGAcards of the era), but storage-related chips and disk controllers were their biggest money makers. In 1986, they introduced theWD33C93single-chipSCSIinterface, which was used in the first 16-bitbus masteringSCSI host adapter, theWD7000 "FASST";in 1987 they introduced theWD37C65,a single-chip implementation of the PC/AT's floppy disk controller circuitry, and the grandfather of modernsuper I/Ochips; in 1988 they introduced theWD42C22 "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 makerTandon;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 fromST-506andESDIdrives to ATA and SCSI, and thus were buying fewer hard disk controller boards. That year saw the rise of Western Digital'sCaviardrives, brand new designs that used the latest inembedded servoand 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 toPhilips,and since disappeared. Its networking and floppy drive controller divisions went to SMC Networks and its SCSI chip business went toFuture Domain,which was later bought out by market leaderAdaptec.Around 1995, the technological lead that the Caviar drives had enjoyed was eclipsed by newer offerings from other companies, especiallyQuantum 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. ThePortfoliodrive (a 3-inch (76 mm)form factormodel, developed withJT Storage) was a flop, as was the SDX hard disk toCD-ROMinterface. Western Digital's drives started to slip further behind competing products, and quality began to suffer;system buildersand PC enthusiasts who used to recommend Western Digital above all else, were going to the competition, particularlyMaxtor,whose products had improved significantly by the late 1990s.

In an attempt to turn the tide in 1998, Western Digital recruited the help ofIBM.This agreement gave Western Digital the rights to use certain IBM technologies, includinggiant magneto-resistive (GMR)heads and access to IBM production facilities. The result was theExpertline 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 8MiBofdisk 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 theJBcode (the 2 MB models had theBBcode). The first 8 MB cache drive was the 100GBWD1000JB, followed by other models starting with 40 GB capacity. Western Digital advertised the JB models for cost-effectivefile 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 10,000rpmSerial ATAHDD, 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,theWestern Digital Raptordrives have a five-year warranty, making them a more attractive choice for inexpensivestorage 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 1TBhard drive, the largest in its My Book line.

In 2007, Western Digital acquired magnetic media maker Komag. Also in the same year, Western Digital adoptedperpendicular recordingtechnology 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 TBVelociRaptorsin 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 WDVelociRaptor,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 thesolid-state drivemarket 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 (SiliconEdgeandSiliconDrivefamilies 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 ofHitachi,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, aNAS-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 toToshiba,in exchange for one of its 2.5-inch hard drive factories in Thailand.[29]

In December 2013, Western Digital stopped manufacturingparallel ATAhard 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 invideo surveillancesystems, 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, theChinese Ministry of Commerceissued 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 were rebranded to Western Digital.

In May 2016, Western Digital acquiredSanDiskfor US$19 billion.[33][34]In the summer of 2017, Western Digital licensed theFusion-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 acquiredTegile Systems,maker offlash memorystorage arrays.[38]Western Digital rebranded Tegile as IntelliFlash[39]and sold it toDataDirect Networksin 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 inKuala Lumpurto 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 2018Fortune 500of the largest United States corporations by revenue.[46]

In June 2019,Kioxiaexperienced 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 thePhisonE18 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 theirMy Book LiveNAS 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 supplierKioxia(formerly Toshiba Memory) began working out the details of amergerto 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 acyberattackbreaching the company's systems on March 23, 2023. On April 2, the company proactively took some services offline, includingMy Cloud,to examine the extent of the intrusion. The attackers allegedly exfiltrated around 10 TB of data from the company, including customer information, and demanded a ransom of "minimum 8 figures" to not publish the data.[59][60]

Merger talks with Kioxia resumed in 2023,[61][62]but was called off after Kioxia's largest shareholderBain Capitaland indirect shareholderSK Hynixdeclared their opposition to the deal in October.[63]In the Octoberearnings 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 andset-top boxes); NAND-flash embedded storage products for mobile devices, notebook PCs and other portable andIoTdevices; 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 andSD cardproducts toOEMsonly 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]
WDGreen Basic computing 2
WDBlue General desktop 2
WDPurple Surveillance 3
WDPurple Pro Surveillance 5
WDRed Network-attached storage 3
WDRed Plus Network-attached storage 3
WDRed Pro Network-attached storage 5
WD_BLACK High-performance/gaming desktop 5
WDGold Enterprise 5
WDUltrastar Data center 5
Internal use External USB enclosures 2 to 3 (together with drive enclosure)

WDGreendrives 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]

WDPurplehard 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 sellsexternal hard drivesunder the WD brand, with product families calledMy 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 theSanDiskbrand, Western Digital offers mobile storage products, cards and readers, USB flash drives, SSDs andMP3 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 theAppleiPhoneandiPad.[84][85][86]The 400GB SanDisk Ultra microSDXC UHS-I card was designed primarily for use inAndroidsmartphones that include an expansion slot.[87][88]

SanDisk Professional

edit
Main article:SanDisk Professional

Under theSanDisk Professionalbrand, 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]andIntel.[94]

Other products

edit

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

Western Digital offers theMy Cloudseries 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 TBCMRhelium-filled HC560, the 20 TBSMRhelium-filled HC650, and the 6.4 TBU.2NVMe SN840SSD.

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 toXE) - 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 andAvere 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 usingshingled magnetic recordingtechnology in itsNASline 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: 2024 Form 10-K Western Digital Corporation".U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.August 20, 2024.RetrievedDecember 20,2024.
  3. ^"Compare Internal HDDs".Western Digital.RetrievedOctober 24,2024.
  4. ^"Compare Internal SSDs".Sandisk.RetrievedOctober 24,2024.
  5. ^"Compare External HDDs".Western Digital.RetrievedOctober 24,2024.
  6. ^"Compare External SSDs".Sandisk.RetrievedOctober 24,2024.
  7. ^"Memory Cards & Card Readers Features & Benefits".Sandisk.RetrievedOctober 24,2024.
  8. ^"NVMe SSDs - Understanding the Benefits & Use Cases".Sandisk.RetrievedOctober 24,2024.
  9. ^"Network Attached Storage (NAS)".Western Digital.RetrievedOctober 24,2024.
  10. ^"Network Attached Storage with SSDs".Sandisk.RetrievedOctober 24,2024.
  11. ^"RAID Storage Solutions & RAID Arrays".Western Digital.RetrievedOctober 24,2024.
  12. ^Dunn, James (October 5, 2012)."Western Digital completes 77 layoffs at Fremont plant".San Francisco Business Times.RetrievedApril 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. ^abcdeMellor, Chris (July 17, 2018)."Western Digital formats hard disk drive factory as demand spins down".The Register.RetrievedAugust 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.RetrievedSeptember 10,2013.
  20. ^Hoover's Handbook of American Business 2004.Vol. 2. Austin, Texas: Hoover's Business Press. 2003. pp.875–876.ISBN1-57311-088-4– via Internet Archive.
  21. ^"Western Digital Launches New Logo with Universal Appeal".October 6, 2004. Archived fromthe originalon October 17, 2015.RetrievedAugust 21,2015.
  22. ^"WD Green Mobile Series Spec Sheet"(PDF).WDC. June 26, 2013.RetrievedJanuary 21,2013.
  23. ^"hdparm(8) - Linux manual page".man7.org.November 2012.RetrievedMarch 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 fromthe originalon August 2, 2012.RetrievedJanuary 27,2009.
  27. ^"WD's New 3TB Drive Packs More Storage Than 32-Bit Can Handle".WIRED.October 19, 2010.RetrievedJanuary 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.RetrievedJuly 17,2013.
  29. ^Ngo, Dong (February 28, 2012)."Toshiba to acquire Western Digital's 3.5-inch HDD manufacturing equipment".CNET.RetrievedMay 30,2018.
  30. ^"Western Digital to Stop Shipping PATA Hard Drives".TechPowerUp.December 23, 2013.RetrievedDecember 22,2014.
  31. ^"WD says its new Purple hard drives are optimized for 24/7 video surveillance".PC World.IDG. February 25, 2014.RetrievedOctober 1,2016.
  32. ^"China finally says yes to WD-HGST union".The Register.RetrievedDecember 18,2018.
  33. ^ab"Western Digital to acquire SanDisk for $19B".USA Today.Gannett Company. October 21, 2015.RetrievedOctober 22,2015.
  34. ^"Western Digital officially closes SanDisk acquisition".The Verge.Vox Media. May 12, 2016.RetrievedAugust 3,2016.
  35. ^Tom Matson (August 8, 2017)."Building a True Data Solution".InsideHPC.RetrievedJune 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.RetrievedJuly 7,2017.
  37. ^abKastrenakes, 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.RetrievedNovember 17,2017.
  39. ^"Tintri saviour to acquire former Tegile business".CRN.September 23, 2019.RetrievedApril 28,2020.
  40. ^Mellor, Chris (September 20, 2019)."Western Digital: We're just about DDN with these data centre systems".The Register.RetrievedFebruary 11,2020.
  41. ^"DDN Announces Acquisition of Intelliflash Enterprise Storage Business Unit From Western Digital".DDN.September 19, 2019.RetrievedAugust 4,2020.
  42. ^Lilly, Paul (October 3, 2017)."Western Digital's mega-capacity 14TB helium-filled hard drive is now shipping".PC Gamer.RetrievedJune 1,2018.
  43. ^Whitwam, Ryan (October 4, 2017)."Western Digital Launches World's First 14TB Hard Drive".ExtremeTech.RetrievedJune 1,2018.
  44. ^King, Ian (December 12, 2017)."Toshiba, Western Digital Settle Fight Over Chip Unit Sale".Bloomberg.RetrievedAugust 15,2018.
  45. ^"Toshiba completes $18 billion sale of chip unit to Bain consortium".Reuters. May 31, 2018.RetrievedAugust 15,2018.
  46. ^"Fortune 500 Companies 2018: Who Made the List".Fortune.Archived fromthe originalon May 2, 2019.RetrievedNovember 21,2018.
  47. ^"Western Digital Comments on Power Outage in Yokkaichi Region and Impact to Yokkaichi Fab Operations".Western Digital.June 27, 2019.RetrievedApril 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".businesswire.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.August 25, 2021.RetrievedJanuary 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.RetrievedFebruary 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.RetrievedJune 1,2018.
  67. ^Mellor, Chris (April 28, 2018)."High-cap enterprise hard drives stream dosh into Western Digital".The Register.RetrievedJune 1,2018.
  68. ^Kingsley-Hughes, Adrian (December 5, 2017)."Western Digital paves the way for next-gen 'Big Data/Fast Data' smartphones".ZDNet.RetrievedJune 1,2018.
  69. ^Locklear, Mallory (October 5, 2017)."SanDisk's 'Industrial' SD cards can withstand extreme temperatures".Engadget.RetrievedJune 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.RetrievedJune 1,2018.
  74. ^Tallis, Billy (October 11, 2016)."Western Digital Introduces WD Blue And WD Green SSDs".AnandTech.RetrievedJune 1,2018.
  75. ^Shilov, Anton (September 21, 2015)."Western Digital to abandon 'Green' brand in favour of 'Blue' HDDs".Kit Guru.RetrievedJune 1,2018.
  76. ^"Western Digital converts Green hard drives to Blue in branding makeover".TechSpot.October 29, 2015.RetrievedDecember 9,2021.
  77. ^"WD Blue vs. Black vs. Red & Purple HDD & SSD Differences (2017)".GamersNexus.RetrievedMarch 7,2019.
  78. ^ab"Save on Components at Newegg: Intel Core i9-9900K Only $430, 2TB WD Elements for $60".PCMAG.RetrievedAugust 5,2020.
  79. ^Gartenberg, Chaim (April 6, 2017)."Western Digital announces its first portable SSD".The Verge.RetrievedJune 2,2018.
  80. ^Cox, Joseph (October 20, 2015)."Some Popular 'Self Encrypting' Hard Drives Have Really Bad Encryption".Motherboard.RetrievedMay 15,2017.
  81. ^Thomson, Iain (October 20, 2015)."Western Digital's hard drive encryption is useless. Totally useless".The Register.RetrievedJune 10,2020.
  82. ^Goodin, Dan (October 20, 2015)."Western Digital self-encrypting hard drives riddled with security flaws".The Register.RetrievedJune 10,2020.
  83. ^"WD Elements Desktop - Product information".shop.westerndigital.RetrievedAugust 5,2020.
  84. ^Heater, Brian (April 25, 2016)."Hands on with SanDisk's iPhone storage-expanding flash drive".TechCrunch.RetrievedJune 2,2018.
  85. ^Fuller, Leanne (July 11, 2017)."Sandisk iXpand flash drive fits iPhone lightning charge port".WPSD Local 6.RetrievedJune 2,2018.
  86. ^Smith, Lyle (August 31, 2017)."WD Announces SanDisk iXpand Base For iPhone & 400GB microSD Card".Storage Review.RetrievedJune 2,2018.
  87. ^Mellor, Chris (August 31, 2017)."SanDisk's little microSD card sucks up 400GB".The Register.RetrievedJune 2,2018.
  88. ^Etherington, Darrell (August 31, 2017)."SanDisk's 400GB microSD card is an Android phone's best friend".TechCrunch.RetrievedJune 2,2018.
  89. ^Broussard, Mitchel (April 11, 2017)."Western Digital Reveals 'G-Drive USB-C' With High-Capacity Storage and MacBook Charging Capabilities".MacRumors.RetrievedJune 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.RetrievedJune 2,2018.
  91. ^"G-Technology - Storage - Mac Accessories".Apple.RetrievedJune 2,2018.
  92. ^Mindrum, Tucker (September 6, 2016)."G-TECHNOLOGY And Atomos Collaborate On Suite Of Products".Storage Review.RetrievedJune 2,2018.
  93. ^Frazer, Bryant (September 6, 2016)."G-Technology Announces 4K Disk-Caddy Workflow for Atomos".Studio Daily.RetrievedJune 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.RetrievedJune 2,2018.
  95. ^Armstrong, Adam (July 7, 2017)."WD Red 10TB Review".Storage Review.RetrievedJune 2,2018.
  96. ^Smith, Lyle (August 18, 2017)."WD My Passport Ultra Review (4TB)".Storage Review.RetrievedJune 2,2018.
  97. ^Miller, Matthew (July 29, 2016)."Upthere launches cloud service with a goal to replace your local storage".ZDNet.RetrievedJune 2,2018.
  98. ^Spadafora, Anthony (August 31, 2017)."Western Digital buys cloud storage company Upthere".BetaNews.RetrievedJune 2,2018.
  99. ^Dignan, Larry (November 15, 2016)."Western Digital's data center unit adds to scale-out storage portfolio".ZDNet.RetrievedJune 1,2018.
  100. ^Wong, Wylie (October 12, 2017)."Western Digital Aims Largest Hard Drive Ever at World's Largest Data Centers".Data Center Knowledge.RetrievedJune 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.RetrievedJune 3,2018.
  104. ^McGrath, Dylan (August 30, 2017)."Western Digital Buys Flash Array Vendor Tegile".EE Times.RetrievedJune 3,2018.
  105. ^Mellor, Chris (September 6, 2017)."File software-flinger Elastifile stretches funding further to $65m".The Register.RetrievedJune 3,2018.
  106. ^Sawers, Paul (March 21, 2017)."Hybrid cloud storage company Avere Systems raises $14 million from Google, Western Digital, others".VentureBeat.RetrievedJune 3,2018.
  107. ^Clarke, Peter (September 11, 2017)."Western Digital backs processor-in-memory startup".eeNews Analog.RetrievedJune 3,2018.
  108. ^Western Digital Settles Capacity Suit,betanews
  109. ^abWestern Digital settles drive size lawsuit,arstechnica
  110. ^Notice of Class Action and Proposed Settlement ( “Notice” )ArchivedMay 7, 2010, at theWayback Machine,wdc
  111. ^Salter, Jim (May 29, 2020)."Western Digital gets sued for sneaking SMR disks into its NAS channel".Ars Technica.RetrievedJune 4,2020.
  112. ^Mellor, Chris (April 14, 2020)."Western Digital admits 2TB-6TB WD Red NAS drives use shingled magnetic recording".blocksandfiles.RetrievedJune 4,2020.
  113. ^Salter, Jim (June 17, 2020)."Lawsuit vs. Western Digital wants to end any use of SMR in NAS drives".Ars Technica.RetrievedJune 24,2020.
  114. ^Salter, Jim (April 21, 2020)."Seagate says Network Attached Storage and SMR don't mix".Ars Technica.RetrievedJune 24,2020.
  115. ^Salter, Jim (June 24, 2020)."Western Digital adds" Red Plus "branding for non-SMR hard drives".Ars Technica.RetrievedJune 24,2020.
  116. ^Ribeiro, John (June 29, 2007)."Western Digital buys platter maker Komag".The Register.RetrievedSeptember 23,2020.
  117. ^Ribeiro, John (March 8, 2012)."Western Digital Closes Hitachi GST Acquisition, to Operate Separate Subsidiaries".PCWorld.RetrievedMay 30,2018.
  118. ^Vättö, Kristian (June 24, 2013)."Western Digital Acquires STEC".AnandTech.RetrievedMay 30,2018.
  119. ^Doulatramani, Chandni (June 24, 2013)."Western Digital buys Stec to build solid-state business".Reuters.RetrievedSeptember 17,2018.
  120. ^Alawadhi, Neha (September 9, 2013)."Western Digital buys flash memory maker Virident, focus now on Fusion-io".Reuters.RetrievedMay 30,2018.
  121. ^Dignan, Larry (September 9, 2013)."Western Digital buys Virident Systems for $685 million, bolsters enterprise efforts".ZDNet.RetrievedMay 30,2018.
  122. ^Vatto, Kristian (December 15, 2014)."Western Digital to Acquire Skyera".AnandTech.RetrievedMay 30,2018.
  123. ^Harris, Robin (March 3, 2015)."WD's HGST buys Amplidata".ZDNet.RetrievedMay 30,2018.
  124. ^"Western Digital buys up Tegile Systems to add to its Data Center Systems business".V3.August 30, 2017.RetrievedMay 30,2018.
  125. ^Mellor, Chris (July 27, 2018)."If you were a firm-swallowing storage giant, how WD you digest them all?".The Register.RetrievedAugust 15,2018.
  126. ^Kovar, Joseph F. (September 11, 2019)."Western Digital Acquires NVMe-oF Startup Kazan".CRN.RetrievedMarch 20,2020.
edit
Wikimedia Commons has media related toWestern Digital.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Western_Digital&oldid=1270669464"