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Western Digital to spin off flash business
- bragr 3y agoSo saddle all the legacy liabilities in with the legacy business and slowly suck out the equity, while the flash business grows? I can see how that's a win for investors at least. Are the flash products still going to be branded WD?
- cogman10 3y agoYup. Seems like an increasingly common move by businesses. AMD did this with global foundries, for example.
- halJordan 3y agoIm not following the surprise or maybe incredulity of this sentiment. It's normal and healthy for businesses to shed poor performers and merge to create synergies. The food majors went through this in the 2010s and nobody was crying or implicating malfeasance. The market should be reacting, that's what makes it useful.
- cogman10 3y agoThere's a difference between what is good for the public, what is good for the market, and even what's good for a business's long term outlook. The issue with spinning off losers and acquiring winners is the prioritization of short-term gains over long term gains. Further, I dispute that it's motivated by "the market" and not the gambling habits of corporate leaders. Take, for example, HP's purchase of Palm for 1 billion dollars. But then a few months later, they let go of basically the entire palm staff. Then they created their webos tablet, then they killed it just a few months after launch. Then they let webos linger until finally selling rights to it to LG of all places. You certainly can argue "this is just the market being efficient" but was it? Or was it overpaid C level individuals making big bets, failing, and punishing their employees for their incompetence?
- dehrmann 3y agoSome companies have done this recently (J&J, iirc), but the article didn't mention any liabilities WD was trying to shed, and both these businesses are viable, so I'm not sure if this was just a knee-jerk corporate criticism or there's something to this.
- SSLy 3y agoSpinning rust side is only living because of price collusion by the flash vendors. Price for 8TB of TLC generic is currently 170 USD. QLC is cheaper than that.
- dehrmann 3y agoThat's actually a valid reason to spin off a business, especially if you happen to know you'll cross the inflection point in ~5 years. It isn't the same as the "legacy liabilities" game, though. Some investors want the growth business, some want the stable business, some want a cheaply-priced declining business (seriously; look into anything that pays royalties).
- mbreese 3y agoSpinning rust is still useful for many purposes and will probably live on for decades more. We generate a ton of data and most of it ends up as read rarely or never. But it can live with slower access times on longer duration storage. It’s honestly just like tape. There will be an HDD market for a long time that will be hidden in the whirl of data centers. Consumer HDD will slowly melt away, but the price/byte and durability of disk will keep it viable for quite a while. It’s still faster than tape (but not as cheap).
- SoftTalker 3y ago> Consumer HDD will slowly melt away I’d say it already has. Does any consumer PC come with a spinning disk anymore?
- purpleflame1257 3y ago
- kstrauser 3y agoNailed it. They’ve been spending goodwill like crazy with debacles like pushing out SMR junk under the Red name. In my experience, their overall quality control has plummeted over the last few years. I’ve bought 3 Red drives for my home Synology. After about a year with each, the drive utilization graph will start creeping up toward a steady 100% while the other drives in the RAID are mostly idle. All drives have the same throughput. All drives have the same IOPS. And yet, the Red starts taking longer and longer to complete its requests. There aren’t any SMART errors or warnings. If I pull the drive and run WD’s diagnostics, it’s fine. It shows every sign of being perfectly healthy, other than being dog slow up until the day I replace it. I’m 3-for-3 with this happening. Maybe I’m the only person and they work great for everyone else. I won’t buy another, though. I think we’re seeing WD turn into HP. People will still buy it for the name on the label, but those in the know will steer their friends to calmer waters.
- lloydatkinson 3y agoI also had two Reds showing bad sectors after around a year, with a Synology. What "colour" drive do you usually buy now? Or even which manufacturer?
- sersi 3y agoI've switched to only buying Toshiba, been very happy with them. They're also more silent as a bonus.
- kstrauser 3y agoI've had good luck with Seagate Iron Wolves. They're a little noisier than others, but I've never had one fail. The Toshiba I've had in there for 3 years has also been fine. After years of seeing many brands of drives go through good and bad years, I'm hesitant to recommend any particular manufacturer. Seagate had a rough stretch, but they seem to be pretty good right now. WD used to be great, and now I don't want anything to do with them. Anytime I look for a new drive, I check out the latest Backblaze report and hope for the best.
- Scoundreller 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ginko 3y agoFeels like the HDD business is the more stable of the two. The competition in the flash/SSD market if fierce.
- kstrauser 3y agoTrue, but it’s clearly the future, at least for mass market devices. There’s still a place for buggy whip makers. The remaining ones can charge an arm and a leg because the few remaining ones generally compete on quality. I bet that’s what we’ll see for HDDs soon.
- justinclift 3y agoSanDisk's reputation is in the toilet though, thanks to things like this: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/sandisk-extreme-ssds-keep-abruptly-failing-firmware-fix-for-only-some-promised/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/sandisk-extreme-ssds... Western Digital's isn't any better though, due to their own mismanagement https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/05/western-digital-gets-sued-for-sneaking-smr-disks-into-its-nas-channel/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/05/western-digital-gets...
- ulfw 3y agoI will never waste money on a Sandisk SSD again. My last one stopped working out of nowhere. Much happier with my Crucial X10.
- tentacleuno 3y agoOn the contrary, my Sandisk SSD I got around (roughly) 6 years ago is still happily working, despite being utilised for a lot of writing. It's gone through 3 house moves, and it's still going strong -- what a great purchase. My 2 Crucial MX500 SSDs have been pretty solid too; nothing bad to report on them. Re: your SSD, did you RMA it?
- splix 3y agoThere is no brand that never produced a SSD with a fault. I had tried all major HDD/SSD brands, and I think every single of them failed at some point. What is important is how they handle that. I had a faulty Sandisk and it was replaced with a working one without any problem or unnecessary question. Some other brands annoy you with stupid questions, puzzles and other tricks trying to avoid doing a replacement. And some just ignore any requests (ex. Samsung, from my experience) to replace a faulty SSD.
- dboreham 3y agoI've never had a problem with Intel, but they sold that business recently.
- vluft 3y agothey had a whole series that would irretrievably die after 1700 idle hours due to a firmware bug.
- duffyjp 3y agoThis summer I bought two Intel 2TB nvme drives for $65 each. Not the newest tech but I've also never had a problem with an Intel SSD. I still have my original 40GB from 2012 in an old laptop and it works just like new. The company that bought their SSD division (Solidigm) supports the Intel branded drives, and their utility had firmware updates ready to go for the ones I bought. I'd probably buy a Solidigm if I needed a new drive and these firesale Intel drives are gone.
- Obscurity4340 3y agoIt would be such a great headline if they worked disk and/or disc into it somehow Like > Western Digital spins Disk+Disc Businesses off
- HPsquared 3y agoOr how it's a bad sector to be in. Edit: I'm sure the editorial staff at The Register are brainstorming a headline at this very moment.
- Obscurity4340 3y agoSomething, something, disc-injury spin from disc/disk industry on worker injuries
- nix0n 3y ago> I'm sure the editorial staff at The Register are brainstorming a headline at this very moment. They're "disc"-ussing it.
- Obscurity4340 3y agoCurses ;)
- skaushik92 3y agoThey probably needed to prioritize getting the article out fast over coming up with good headlines since it’s a flash sale
- Obscurity4340 3y agoI wish I could get paid, like as a job, to mint the headlines
- greatgib 3y agoUsually stock investors don't like diversification within companies. It is harder to value. I think that they realized that there is not so much in common between the HDD and flash business. No added value to own the 2 business compared to separated entities. With that, the WD legacy HDD business can continue as a dividend stock dying slowly. And the flash business can now pretend to crazy valuations based on a shinny future.
- adventured 3y agoIt might also free up the flash business to make aggressive acquisitions without worrying quite as much about anti-trust from having a larger position in the overall storage market due to the old HDD business (which is dominated by just three firms). The stand-alone HDD business will end up as an acquisition in the not-distant future (Toshiba, Seagate, etc. somebody will eat it).
- sgerenser 3y agoThey need to come up with a good name for the flash business. Maybe something that indicates their products are like disks, but made from silicon instead of spinning rust. SiliconDisk? Maybe Sand-Disk? Or simplify that to Sandisk?
- chemmail 3y agoThe answer is obvious. Eastern Digital.
- phendrenad2 3y agoWhich one will get the RISC-V cores?