Western Digital

Western Digital expanded its WD Blue NVMe family of budget SSDs this week with the introduction of the the WD Blue SN5000 series, an updated lineup of SSDs that, among other things, adds a 4 TB model. Being budget drives, the SN5000 series is not going to be a performance monster, but their combination of capacity, reliability, and relatively low price could make them popular both among casual buyers and among enthusiasts looking for relatively cheap bulk solid-state storage. Western Digital's WD Blue SN500 NVMe drives come in an M.2-2280 form-factor and are based around an in-house WD controller (the company rarely discloses their codenames these days). WD's controller is a 4 channel, DRAMless design, which is what we typically see for budget and mainstream...

Western Digital My Book Duo DAS Review

Earlier this week, we took a look at LaCie's high end 2-bay RAID DAS, the 2big Thunderbolt 2. It integrated both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt 2 as connectivity options...

27 by Ganesh T S on 7/12/2014

Western Digital Launches My Book Duo 2-bay USB 3.0 DAS

Even as the consumer NAS market continues to experience rapid growth, it is impossible for consumers to have really fast access to data when the storage is bottlenecked by...

11 by Ganesh T S on 6/24/2014

Western Digital My Cloud EX2 2-bay NAS Review

The market for 2-bay and 4-bay NAS units has been growing at a much faster rate compared to other configurations. This trend is only expected to accelerate over the...

20 by Ganesh T S on 3/4/2014

Western Digital My Cloud EX4 and LenovoEMC ix4-300d Home NAS Units Review

The consumer Network Attached Storage (NAS) market has seen tremendous growth over the past few years. As the amount of digital media generated by the average household increases, the...

38 by Ganesh T S on 2/26/2014

The WD Black2 Review: World's First 2.5" Dual-Drive

If you had asked me a few years ago, I would've said that hybrid drives will be the next big thing in the storage industry. A hybrid drive made...

100 by Kristian Vättö on 1/30/2014

Western Digital Releases Black^2: 120GB SSD + 1TB HD Dual-Drive in 2.5" Form Factor

To date all the hybrid storage solutions we have seen have been rather limited. Seagate got the idea right with the Momentus XT but having only 8GB of NAND...

66 by Kristian Vättö on 11/25/2013

Western Digital Updates My Cloud Lineup with 4-bay EX4

We had covered the launch of the Western Digital My Cloud platform last month. The unit available at launch was a single-bay version similar to the popular My Book...

8 by Ganesh T S on 11/12/2013

Western Digital Sentinel Lineup Updated with Xeon-Based Ultra-Compact Servers

Western Digital's SMB / enterprise network storage lineup (the Sentinel series) has been based on the Microsoft Windows Storage Server platform. The most recent update to the Sentinel lineup...

10 by Ganesh T S on 10/10/2013

Western Digital Launches My Cloud Consumer NAS Platform

The network attached storage market is growing by leaps and bounds. While the SMB (small and medium business) / enterprise market is driven by speed, IOPS and concurrent access...

27 by Ganesh T S on 10/2/2013

Battle of the 4 TB NAS Drives: WD Red and Seagate NAS HDD Face-Off

The SMB / SOHO / consumer NAS market is expected to experience good growth over the next few years. With declining PC sales and increase in affordability of SSDs...

54 by Ganesh T S on 9/4/2013

Western Digital Updates Red NAS Drive Lineup with 4 TB and 2.5" Versions

In July 2012, we saw Western Digital tackle the burgeoning NAS market with the 3.5" Red hard drive lineup. They specifically catered to units having 1-5 bays. The firmware...

29 by Ganesh T S on 9/3/2013

The Joys of 802.11ac WiFi

We’ve had quite a few major wireless networking standards over the years, and while some have certainly been better than others, I have remained a strong adherent of wired...

139 by Jarred Walton on 7/8/2013

Western Digital Acquires STEC

Western Digital just announced that they've entered into an agreement to acquire STEC for approximately $340 million in cash. Technically STEC will be acquired by HGST (Hitachi Global Storage...

7 by Kristian Vättö on 6/24/2013

Western Digital Launches RX4100 Rackmount SMB Storage Server

Western Digital's Windows Storage Server based DX4000 has been very well received by SMBs. However, its desktop form factor restricted the target market. After listening to feedback from customers...

3 by Ganesh T S on 5/30/2013

Western Digital Launches WD Se Hard Drive Lineup for Datacenters and High-end NAS Units

One of the most interesting launches from Western Digital last year was the WD Red line of hard drives from the client storage division. It was intended for low...

23 by Ganesh T S on 5/28/2013

Western Digital and SanDisk Announce Partnership to Produce Hybrid Drives

Yesterday Western Digital and SanDisk announced their collaboration for hybrid hard drives (or SSHDs as they are now called). The idea behind the move is that SanDisk will supply...

30 by Kristian Vättö on 5/9/2013

HGST/G-Technology Touro, G|Drive, and G|RAID

We met with HGST at their hotel suite and were interested to hear their plans now that they’ve been acquired by WD. Western Digital bought HGST (who had previously...

0 by Jarred Walton on 1/9/2013

Hands On With Western Digital's New 5mm Hybrid Hard Drive

Remember the 5mm hybrid HDD announcement from yesterday? I just spent some time with the drive itself at the IDF Tech Showcase. The 5mm drive will be OEM-only at...

17 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/11/2012

Western Digital Teases 5mm Hybrid Hard Drive

Intel's Ultrabook push has forced hard drive makers to do two things: take hybrid drives more seriously (because of the Ultrabook performance requirements) as well as focus on thinner...

13 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/10/2012

Western Digital My Book VelociRaptor Duo Review

With Thunderbolt ports available on both Macs and PCs, as well as Thunderbolt controller costs dropping thanks to the introduction of Intel's Cactus Ridge, the Thunderbolt storage space is...

30 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 8/30/2012

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