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Good to see Western Digital will stay relevant. After years of buying their products I was concerned they'd fade into obscurity without a viable SSD product. C

Good to see Western Digital will stay relevant. After years of buying their products I was concerned they'd fade into obscurity without a viable SSD product. Conner got absorbed by Seagage. Micropolis rebranded and went bankrupt. Maxtor got sponged up by Western Digital. Hard to bet on a horse that lasts.

otakucode 9y ago
I'm not intimately familiar with the various players in the storage market, but as an outsider I would guess that Western Digital must be doing alright. They could have, but didn't, break up the price-fixing ruling that market and taken it over handily if need be. Amazing that in 2018 it's still more expensive to get data storage on a dumb grid of NAND gates built out of common materials than it is to get it on hard drives infused with helium, sporting a high precision high speed motor, platters coated with rare materials, neodymium magnets, and, coming soon, lasers!
- southern_cross 9y ago
  SSDs are trouncing hard drives in capacity, though. AFAIK, they currently top out at 30TB in the 2.5in form factor and 100TB in the 3.5in form factor. (I'm not sure what the current top end is for other form factors but they're probably remarkably high, too.) Of course, prices for these units are also way up there.
  - theologic 9y ago
    Yup, it's hard to get rid of spinning rust unless you want to spend 10x the cost. While we don't have a good future in the sport car market (SSDs), we are truly the good guys are storing lots of stuff cheap on a cent/GB level. Basically we're semi-truck and our future is the cloud. An overview of the hard drive mission and tech we're working on presented at OCP by your's truly and my roadmap buddy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTngxWv64fI&t=624s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTngxWv64fI&t=624s
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > Amazing that in 2018 it's still more expensive to get data storage on a dumb grid of NAND gates built out of common materials than it is to get it on hard drives infused with helium, sporting a high precision high speed motor, platters coated with rare materials, neodymium magnets, and, coming soon, lasers! And the heads, those are incredibly tiny works of art.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- jakeogh 9y ago
  whua? lasers? on rust? what for? (bad guess) thermal bulk erasure? edit: found it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat-assisted_magnetic_recording https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat-assisted_magnetic_recordi...
  - qilo 9y ago
    Lasers are dead. DOA, at least according to WD. Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording (MAMR) is the next thing for rust. WD plans to start shipping MAMR drives in 2019. see: http://www.anandtech.com/show/11925/western-digital-stuns-storage-industry-with-mamr-breakthrough-for-nextgen-hdds http://www.anandtech.com/show/11925/western-digital-stuns-st...
- derefr 9y ago
  All those things are still easier/cheaper in CapEx than new lithographic process nodes. Which has always been true: ever since the discovery of semiconductors, nothing in tech has ever been more capital-intensive than the R&D and working-up of a new fab that can put out smaller-nanometer—or in this case, many-more-layered—circuits. It's just that now, process nodes are something that apply to storage, too.
gruturo 9y ago
Oh the memories. And there were many more. Fujitsu. Hitachi. CDC. Quantum - the amazing scsi fireballs, the ridiculous (but cheap) bigfoots.
- chkuendig 9y ago
  Never forget the IBM/Hitachi Deathstar
  - technofiend 9y ago
    Or the reef a competitor made from IBM hard drives offshore of IBM's Florida office.
    - Shelnutt2 9y ago
      Do you have more details? Sounds like a good story!
      - berg01 9y ago
        https://www.gillware.com/blog/articles/hdd-burial-sea-davy-jones-locker/ https://www.gillware.com/blog/articles/hdd-burial-sea-davy-j...
        B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
        If anyone asked if there was a text mentioning Romans, Persians and 'gnarly waves', I'd have bet against it.
        berg01 9y ago
        The web is a wonderful thing. :)
  - __david__ 9y ago
    And Maxtor.
arthurfm 9y ago
HGST won't be with us for much longer either due to the recent WD rebranding [1][2]. As part of the unification of our new Western Digital brand, the Ultrastar DC HC320 is being introduced under the Western Digital Data Center (DC) segment branding. All new commercial and enterprise products going forward will carry this new Western Digital branding as we transition away from the HGST brand. Western Digital has gone through a significant transformation with the integration of multiple companies. Moving to the Western Digital brand for all of our commercial and enterprise products is the first step in unifying the brands in our portfolio. [1] https://blog.westerndigital.com/western-digital-sets-new-high-lower-capacity-options/ https://blog.westerndigital.com/western-digital-sets-new-hig... [2] https://www.hgst.com/products/hard-drives/ultrastar-dc-hc320 https://www.hgst.com/products/hard-drives/ultrastar-dc-hc320
- theologic 9y ago
  Interesting, if you check the leadership at WD, virtually all of them came from HGST. (President, CFO, COO, etc.) This was a case where the acquiring company became the acquired, and they moved their headquarters from SoCal to NorCal, the ultimate signal of who won the internal war. Once they bought SanDisk, a lot of the SanDisk people moved to Micron. Finally, some key notable players from WD moved to Seagate. The industry has been musical chairs.
- derefr 9y ago
  Does this mean that the "WD Data Center" marque will be the indication, going forward, that a drive has the reliability ratings that Backblaze et al regularly see out of currently-HGST-branded drives?

otakucode 9y ago

I'm not intimately familiar with the various players in the storage market, but as an outsider I would guess that Western Digital must be doing alright. They could have, but didn't, break up the price-fixing ruling that market and taken it over handily if need be. Amazing that in 2018 it's still more expensive to get data storage on a dumb grid of NAND gates built out of common materials than it is to get it on hard drives infused with helium, sporting a high precision high speed motor, platters coated with rare materials, neodymium magnets, and, coming soon, lasers!

southern_cross 9y ago
SSDs are trouncing hard drives in capacity, though. AFAIK, they currently top out at 30TB in the 2.5in form factor and 100TB in the 3.5in form factor. (I'm not sure what the current top end is for other form factors but they're probably remarkably high, too.) Of course, prices for these units are also way up there.
- theologic 9y ago
  Yup, it's hard to get rid of spinning rust unless you want to spend 10x the cost. While we don't have a good future in the sport car market (SSDs), we are truly the good guys are storing lots of stuff cheap on a cent/GB level. Basically we're semi-truck and our future is the cloud. An overview of the hard drive mission and tech we're working on presented at OCP by your's truly and my roadmap buddy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTngxWv64fI&t=624s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTngxWv64fI&t=624s
jacquesm 9y ago
> Amazing that in 2018 it's still more expensive to get data storage on a dumb grid of NAND gates built out of common materials than it is to get it on hard drives infused with helium, sporting a high precision high speed motor, platters coated with rare materials, neodymium magnets, and, coming soon, lasers! And the heads, those are incredibly tiny works of art.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
jakeogh 9y ago
whua? lasers? on rust? what for? (bad guess) thermal bulk erasure? edit: found it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat-assisted_magnetic_recording https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat-assisted_magnetic_recordi...
- qilo 9y ago
  Lasers are dead. DOA, at least according to WD. Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording (MAMR) is the next thing for rust. WD plans to start shipping MAMR drives in 2019. see: http://www.anandtech.com/show/11925/western-digital-stuns-storage-industry-with-mamr-breakthrough-for-nextgen-hdds http://www.anandtech.com/show/11925/western-digital-stuns-st...
derefr 9y ago
All those things are still easier/cheaper in CapEx than new lithographic process nodes. Which has always been true: ever since the discovery of semiconductors, nothing in tech has ever been more capital-intensive than the R&D and working-up of a new fab that can put out smaller-nanometer—or in this case, many-more-layered—circuits. It's just that now, process nodes are something that apply to storage, too.

gruturo 9y ago

Oh the memories. And there were many more. Fujitsu. Hitachi. CDC. Quantum - the amazing scsi fireballs, the ridiculous (but cheap) bigfoots.

chkuendig 9y ago
Never forget the IBM/Hitachi Deathstar
- technofiend 9y ago
  Or the reef a competitor made from IBM hard drives offshore of IBM's Florida office.
  - Shelnutt2 9y ago
    Do you have more details? Sounds like a good story!
    - berg01 9y ago
      https://www.gillware.com/blog/articles/hdd-burial-sea-davy-jones-locker/ https://www.gillware.com/blog/articles/hdd-burial-sea-davy-j...
      - B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
        If anyone asked if there was a text mentioning Romans, Persians and 'gnarly waves', I'd have bet against it.
        berg01 9y ago
        The web is a wonderful thing. :)
- __david__ 9y ago
  And Maxtor.

arthurfm 9y ago

HGST won't be with us for much longer either due to the recent WD rebranding [1][2]. As part of the unification of our new Western Digital brand, the Ultrastar DC HC320 is being introduced under the Western Digital Data Center (DC) segment branding. All new commercial and enterprise products going forward will carry this new Western Digital branding as we transition away from the HGST brand. Western Digital has gone through a significant transformation with the integration of multiple companies. Moving to the Western Digital brand for all of our commercial and enterprise products is the first step in unifying the brands in our portfolio. [1] https://blog.westerndigital.com/western-digital-sets-new-high-lower-capacity-options/ https://blog.westerndigital.com/western-digital-sets-new-hig... [2] https://www.hgst.com/products/hard-drives/ultrastar-dc-hc320 https://www.hgst.com/products/hard-drives/ultrastar-dc-hc320

theologic 9y ago
Interesting, if you check the leadership at WD, virtually all of them came from HGST. (President, CFO, COO, etc.) This was a case where the acquiring company became the acquired, and they moved their headquarters from SoCal to NorCal, the ultimate signal of who won the internal war. Once they bought SanDisk, a lot of the SanDisk people moved to Micron. Finally, some key notable players from WD moved to Seagate. The industry has been musical chairs.
derefr 9y ago
Does this mean that the "WD Data Center" marque will be the indication, going forward, that a drive has the reliability ratings that Backblaze et al regularly see out of currently-HGST-branded drives?