Western Digital Corporation (WDC, commonly known as Western Digital or WD) is an American
computer drive
In computing, mass storage refers to the storage of large amounts of data in a persisting and machine-readable fashion. In general, the term is used as large in relation to contemporaneous hard disk drives, but it has been used large in relati ...
manufacturer and
data storage
Data storage is the recording (storing) of information (data) in a storage medium. Handwriting, phonographic recording, magnetic tape, and optical discs are all examples of storage media. Biological molecules such as RNA and DNA are cons ...
company, headquartered in
San Jose, California
San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...
. It designs, manufactures and sells data technology products, including
data storage device
Data storage is the recording (storing) of information (data) in a storage medium. Handwriting, phonographic recording, magnetic tape, and optical discs are all examples of storage media. Biological molecules such as RNA and DNA are cons ...
s,
data center systems and
cloud storage services.
Western Digital has a long history in the electronics industry as an
integrated circuit maker and a storage products company. It is one of the largest computer
hard disk drive
A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magn ...
manufacturers, along with producing
solid state drive
A solid-state drive (SSD) is a solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies to store data Persistence (computer science), persistently, typically using flash memory, and functioning as secondary storage in the Computer ...
s and
flash memory
Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both u ...
devices. Its competitors include the data management and storage companies
Seagate Technology and
Micron Technology
Micron Technology, Inc. is an American producer of computer memory and computer data storage including dynamic random-access memory, flash memory, and USB flash drives. It is headquartered in Boise, Idaho. Its consumer products, including ...
.
History
1970s
Western Digital was founded on April 23, 1970, by Alvin B. Phillips, a
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent public companies, Motorola ...
employee, as General Digital Corporation, initially a manufacturer of
MOS test equipment. It was originally based in
Newport Beach, California, shortly thereafter moving to
Santa Ana, California, and would go on to become one of the largest technology firms headquartered in
Orange County.
It rapidly became a specialty
semiconductor
A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical conductivity value falling between that of a conductor, such as copper, and an insulator, such as glass. Its resistivity falls as its temperature rises; metals behave in the opposite way. ...
maker, with start-up capital provided by several individual investors and industrial giant
Emerson Electric
Emerson Electric Co. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Ferguson, Missouri. The Fortune 500, ''Fortune'' 500 company manufactures products and provides engineering services for industrial, commercial, and consumer marke ...
. 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
An electronic calculator is typically a portable electronic device used to perform calculations, ranging from basic arithmetic to complex mathematics.
The first solid-state electronic calculator was created in the early 1960s. Pocket-size ...
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,
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.
Western Digital introduced several products during the late 1970s, including the ''
MCP-1600
The MCP-1600 is a multi-chip 16-bit microprocessor introduced by Western Digital in 1975 and produced through the early 1980s. Used in the Pascal MicroEngine, the WD16 processor in the Alpha Microsystems AM-100, and the DEC LSI-11 microcom ...
'' multi-chip,
microcode
In processor design, microcode (μcode) is a technique that interposes a layer of computer organization between the central processing unit (CPU) hardware and the programmer-visible instruction set architecture of a computer. Microcode is a la ...
d
CPU
A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and ...
. The MCP-1600 was used to implement
DEC's
LSI-11 system, the
WD16, and their own
Pascal MicroEngine Pascal MicroEngine is a series of microcomputer products manufactured by Western Digital from 1979 through the mid-1980s, designed specifically to run the UCSD p-System efficiently. Compared to other microcomputers, which use a machine language p-c ...
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'',
["The FD1771 is a single-chip floppy disk formatter/controller that interfaces with most available disk drives and virtually all types of computers."] one of the first single-chip floppy disk drive formatter/controllers, which could replace significant amounts of TTL logic.
1980s
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
A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magn ...
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
Compaq Computer Corporation (sometimes abbreviated to CQ prior to a 2007 rebranding) was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced ...
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.
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'' subsidiary, purchased 1986, which 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
Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in ...
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
Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, electrical, optical and logical interface ...
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
Tandon (or Tandan, Tanden, or Tondon) is a surname found among Hindu Khatris and Sikhs of Punjab, India. It is derived from a Khatri clan.
Notable people
Notable people include:
Activists
*Purushottam Das Tandon, ''Bharat Ratna'', Indian freed ...
; the first products of that union under Western Digital's own name were the "Centaur" series of ATA and XT attachment drives.
1990s
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 Embedded servo or wedge servo is a type of servo configuration used on hard disk
A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using ma ...
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
Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters is ...
, 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.
Products and ideas of this time did not go far. The ''Portfolio'' drive (a
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
In 2001, Western Digital became the first manufacturer to offer mainstream ATA hard disk drives with 8
MiB
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
of
disk buffer
In computer storage, disk buffer (often ambiguously called disk cache or cache buffer) is the embedded memory in a hard disk drive (HDD) or solid state drive (SSD) acting as a buffer between the rest of the computer and the physical hard ...
. 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 server
In computing, a file server (or fileserver) is a computer attached to a network that provides a location for shared disk access, i.e. storage of computer files (such as text, image, sound, video) that can be accessed by the workstations that are ab ...
s. 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.
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. In the same year, Western Digital offered the first 10,000
rpm Serial ATA
SATA (Serial AT Attachment) is a computer bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PATA) standar ...
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"). In 2005, Western Digital released a 150 GB version, the WD1500, 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. , 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. WD GP drives are programmed to unload the heads whenever idle for a very short period of time. Many Linux installations write to the file system a few times a minute in the background. 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.
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
''Velociraptor'' (; ) is a genus of small dromaeosaurid dinosaur that lived in Asia during the Late Cretaceous epoch, about 75 million to 71 million years ago. Two species are currently recognized, although others have been assigned in the p ...
, featured 300 GB capacity and platters enclosed in the IcePack, a 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 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. On March 30, 2009, they entered the
solid-state drive
A solid-state drive (SSD) is a solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies to store data persistently, typically using flash memory, and functioning as secondary storage in the hierarchy of computer storage. It i ...
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.
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.
2010s
In March 2011, Western Digital agreed to acquire the storage unit of
Hitachi
() is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. It is the parent company of the Hitachi Group (''Hitachi Gurūpu'') and had formed part of the Ni ...
,
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.
In 2011, Western Digital established an R&D facility at its Malaysian plant at a cost of 1.2 billion US dollars.
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
, commonly known as Toshiba and stylized as TOSHIBA, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems ...
, in exchange for one of its 2.5-inch hard drive factories in Thailand.
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. 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.
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. 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.
In the summer of 2017, Western Digital licensed the
Fusion-io/SanDisk ION Accelerator software to One Stop Systems.
In 2016, HGST closed its Malaysian plant.
In August 2017, Western Digital bought cloud storage provider Upthere, with the intention to continue building out the service.
In September 2017, Western Digital acquired
Tegile Systems
IntelliFlash is a brand of DataDirect Networks (DDN) based in San Jose that manufactures flash storage arrays. The company, then known as Tegile Systems, was acquired by Western Digital in 2017 and by DDN in September 2019.
History
Tegile Sys ...
, maker of
flash memory
Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both u ...
storage arrays. Western Digital rebranded Tegile as IntelliFlash and sold it to
DataDirect Networks in September 2019.
In April 2017, Western Digital moved its headquarters from Irvine, California to HGST's headquarters in San Jose, California. In December 2017, Western Digital reached an agreement with Toshiba about the sale of the jointly owned NAND production facility in Japan. In May 2018, Toshiba reached an agreement with the Bain consortium about the sale of that chip unit.
In October 2017, Western Digital shipped the world's first 14 TB HDD, the helium-filled HGST Ultrastar Hs14.
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 July 2018, Western Digital announced their plan to close their hard disk production facility in
Kuala Lumpur
, anthem = ''Maju dan Sejahtera''
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, pushpin_map = Malaysia#Southeast Asia#Asia
, pushpin_map_caption =
, coordinates =
, sub ...
to shift the company towards flash drive production, leaving the company with just two HDD production facilities in Thailand.
The company ranked 158th on the 2018
Fortune 500
The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by '' Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States corporations by total revenue for their respective fiscal years. The list includes publicly held companies, along ...
of the largest United States corporations by revenue.
In June 2019,
Kioxia
Kioxia Holdings Corporation (), simply known as Kioxia and stylized as KIOXIA, is an American-Japanese multinational computer memory manufacturer headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. The company was spun off from the Toshiba conglomerate as in June ...
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.
2020s
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
Phison Electronics Corporation () is a Taiwanese public electronics company that primarily designs, manufactures and sells controllers for NAND flash memory chips. These are integrated into flash-based products such as USB flash drives, memory c ...
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.
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.
In August 2021, Western Digital and Japanese memory-chip supplier
Kioxia
Kioxia Holdings Corporation (), simply known as Kioxia and stylized as KIOXIA, is an American-Japanese multinational computer memory manufacturer headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. The company was spun off from the Toshiba conglomerate as in June ...
(formerly Toshiba Memory) began working out the details of a
merger
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are business transactions in which the ownership of companies, other business organizations, or their operating units are transferred to or consolidated with another company or business organization. As an aspect ...
to be finalized in September 2021. In October of the same year, it became clear that the merger talks stalled.
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.
Products
Storage devices
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
The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other com ...
devices; and NAND flash memory wafers.
Western Digital's embedded storage devices include the iNAND product line and custom embedded products. Western Digital also provides microSD and
SD card
Secure Digital, officially abbreviated as SD, is a proprietary non-volatile flash memory card format developed by the SD Association (SDA) for use in portable devices.
The standard was introduced in August 1999 by joint efforts between San ...
products to
OEMs only for automotive and industrial applications.
Use case classes
Western Digital color-codes certain storage devices based on their intended use case:
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.
WD Purple hard drives are designed for write-heavy workloads; for instance, security applications (ex: 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.
WD brand
Western Digital also sells
external hard drives
A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magneti ...
under the WD brand, with product families called
My Passport
My Passport is a series of portable external hard drives and solid state drives produced by Western Digital. There are currently six series of My Passport drives; ''Essential Edition'', ''Essential SE Edition'', ''Elite Edition'', ''Essential for ...
,
My Book, WD Elements, and Easystore.
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.
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.
As of 2019, the WD Elements line consists of WD Elements Portable (1-5TB, 4.3 x 3.2 x 0.5 inch),
WD Elements Desktop (3-14 TB, 5.3 x 1.8 x 6.5 inch), and WD Elements SE.
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 product family, including the Flash Drive and Base, is made specifically for use with the
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ances ...
iPhone and
iPad
The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operati ...
. The 400GB SanDisk Ultra microSDXC UHS-I card was designed primarily for use in
Android
Android may refer to:
Science and technology
* Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human
* Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system
** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...
smartphones that include an expansion slot.
SanDisk Professional
Under the
SanDisk Professional
SanDisk Professional (previously G-Technology) is a brand of Western Digital that produces external storage products designed and marketed for the Macintosh, creative pro, photography and A/V markets. Its USB, FireWire, eSATA, SAS, SCSI Thunder ...
brand, Western Digital offers HDD, SSD, platforms and systems products designed specifically for creative professionals.
It has partnerships with Apple, Atomos, and
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...
.
Other products
After first offering the
Western Digital Media Center
The Media Center, branded by Western Digital, is a 7,200-rpm hard drive (either 160 GB or 250GB), combined with a reader of CompactFlash Type I and II, Microdrive, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, MultiMediaCard, Secure Digital, and SmartMedia medi ...
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
A home theater PC (HTPC) or media center computer is a convergent device that combines some or all the capabilities of a personal computer with a software application that focuses on video, photo, audio playback, and sometimes video recording ...
, able 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.
Through Western Digital's acquisition of Upthere, the company offers personal cloud storage through the Upthere Home app and UpOS operating system.
Western Digital sells data center hardware and software including an enterprise-class Ultrastar product line that was previously sold under the HGST brand. Current hardware products include the 20 TB
CMR helium-filled HC560, the 20 TB
SMR
SMR may refer to:
Organisations
* Seattle Mountain Rescue, American non-profit
* Solomon Mahlangu Regiment of the South African Army
* Swedish Resistance Movement, a neo-Nazi political party
Places
* San Marino (by ISO 3166-1, IOC and FIFA cou ...
helium-filled HC650, and the 6.4 TB
U.2 NVMe SN840
SSD
A solid-state drive (SSD) is a solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies to store data persistently, typically using flash memory, and functioning as secondary storage in the hierarchy of computer storage. It is ...
,
Corporate affairs
Western Digital Capital is Western Digital's investment arm. It has contributed funding for data technology companies such as Elastifile and
Avere Systems.
Lawsuits
Lawsuits have been filed against various manufacturers including Western Digital, related to the claimed capacity of their drives. The drives are labelled using the convention of 10
3 (1,000) bytes to the kilobyte, resulting in a perceived capacity shortfall when reported by most operating systems, which tend to use 2
10 (1,024) bytes to the kilobyte.
[Western Digital settles drive size lawsuit](_blank)
arstechnica.com
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, with a $30 refund to affected customers in the form of backup and recovery software of the same value.
In May 2020, Western Digital was sued for using
shingled magnetic recording technology in its
NAS line of consumer drives without explicitly informing consumers. 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.
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. 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.
Acquisitions
References
External links
*
*
{{Authority control
1970 establishments in California
American brands
American companies established in 1970
Companies formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange
Companies listed on the Nasdaq
Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1976
Computer companies established in 1970
Computer companies of the United States
Computer hardware companies
Computer memory companies
Computer storage companies
Manufacturing companies based in San Jose, California
Multinational companies headquartered in the United States
Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area
Technology companies established in 1970