Thursday, February 10th 2022

Western Digital's Flash Memory Factory Contaminated—6.5 Exabytes Lost

Press Release by
btarunr
 Discuss (42 Comments)
Western Digital Corp. (Nasdaq: WDC) today announced that contamination of certain material used in its manufacturing processes has occurred and is affecting production operations at both its Yokkaichi and Kitakami joint venture, flash fabrication facilities. Western Digital's current assessment of the impact is a reduction of its flash availability of at least 6.5 exabytes. The company is working closely with its joint venture partner, Kioxia, to implement necessary measures that will restore the facilities to normal operational status as quickly as possible.

Western Digital creates environments for data to thrive. As a leader in data infrastructure, the company is driving the innovation needed to help customers capture, preserve, access and transform an ever-increasing diversity of data. Everywhere data lives, from advanced data centers to mobile sensors to personal devices, our industry-leading solutions deliver the possibilities of data. Our data-centric solutions are comprised of the Western Digital, G-Technology, SanDisk, and WD brands.

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42 Comments on Western Digital's Flash Memory Factory Contaminated—6.5 Exabytes Lost

#26
Testsubject01
bugCoincidental with what? I have just told you retail prices have been steady for years.
In a manner, that prices stagnate despite advances in technology and manufacturing.

Just out of curiosity checked my Crucial MX500 500 GB that was bought in 2018 for 50€, it is still selling for 50€ as of today.
bugif you're going to tell me this was done on purpose to push the prices up, I will tell you you're just confusing cause and effect.
Nah! My money is on corner cutting, seems to be a win-win anyway. Higher margins and if something happens, they hand it right through to the end customers.
Posted on Reply
#27
Arpeegee
After seeing 1TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 drives dip below $150 last year must have spooked the manufacturers. Not sure what kind of quality control they enforce/backup power measures in those fabs but obviously it benefits them to screw up the process either through negligience or purposefully. No reason to fix what's working (for them).
Posted on Reply
#28
AsRock
TPU addict
Come on, they could say they are at least investigating it and seeing who is responsible and how it all happened.

Want some names on a cutting block before i believe, but then i am sure they would have a fall guy haha.
Posted on Reply
#30
TheUn4seen
bugIt's also funny how these comments always pop up every time a fab has a mishap like this. Despite the fact that 1TB SSD have stagnated at 10-12c/GB for years.
What does the consumer price have to do with anything? We're talking about actual business, and NAND prices have been falling for a while, eating into manufacturer's margins. Please don't confuse real world with consumer toys.

Posted on Reply
#31
Mysteoa
Don't they have backups? For a storage company to not back up their stuff off site, It's a shame. /s
Posted on Reply
#32
chrcoluk
TheUn4seenWhoopsiedoodles. It's funny how those accidents always tend to happen when prices drop too much and the companies don't really try to make it sound plausible. Memory has gotten too cheap? Say you had an accident and pump those prices, no one can question it because your process is a trade secret. But here, the inrernally verified documents say that's what happened, and a corporation would never lie for profit.
I have worked in manufacturing, and if something went wrong our thoughts were not to tell the whole world about it, we keep to ourselves.

However in a world where you know demand exceeds supply, and your customers wont go away but instead will pay more, then yeah this is happening, and to me this is a game by western digital, ironically the company that started this "shortages make more money" back when their factories got flooded.
Posted on Reply
#33
bug
sparkyarPower outages, Floods, Fires, Contamination... They are getting "very creative", I expect ninjas or an alien invasion at some point, we´ll only have to wait for the next drop of nand prices in 2 or 3 years...
Because the first three are totally surprising when you build everything in the Pacific Ring of Fire. And contamination never happens by accident. Like never-ever.
MysteoaDon't they have backups? For a storage company to not back up their stuff off site, It's a shame. /s
They can't afford backup. Have you seen the price on a 4TB SDD? :P
Posted on Reply
#34
Paganstomp


They already make a drink for the impending doom. Enjoy!
Posted on Reply
#36
R0H1T
Probably a nice time to let the Chinese manufacturers loose? Didn't they have some huge capacity (NAND?) planned for sometime around 2022-24 or something.
Posted on Reply
#37
Verpal
Vya DomusNot that I actually believe this was done on purpose but this shows how absurd these situations have gotten. You just can't have a handful of players account for the vast majority of the volume manufactured in critical industries, the world literally runs on computers. Accidents do happen and what do you then ? Just casually accept that a significant chunk of the supply of critical components will be gone for X amount of weeks/months/years ?
Generally you don't get new player competing in these highly capital/IP intensive field unless government pour money down the drain (i.e. China), also, concentrated manufacturing process is extremely efficient comparing to distributed manufacturing, unless you like paying double the price for same performance, manufacturing process won't change.
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#38
owen10578
Just the classic "Oh shit flash prices are getting to cheap, we need to have an accident to raise the prices again"
Posted on Reply
#39
R0H1T
owen10578Just the classic "Oh shit flash prices are getting to cheap, we need to have an accident to raise the prices again"
That's way too simplistic & frankly BS explanation, looking at the scale of the disaster it looks more like a sabotage than a self goal.
Posted on Reply
#40
efikkan
DeathtoGnomesSo we have this problem, but hey look at us and our infrastructure!
So what if they screwed up their production? At least they got their buzzwords right! :D

It makes me think of when companies claims to be victims of international government-sponsored hackers, when in reality they just fell victim to their own lack of following established security practices. It's just leadership covering their behinds for the company boards and investors.

As for WD's factory contamination, this sounds like something that should have been caught much earlier. When stakes are this high, like even just a short power outage may damage thousands of wafers in production, it's common to take precautions to minimize the risk and/or impact.
Posted on Reply
#41
Wirko
Some chemical was infected with Covid. (And it may not even be a joke - various coronavirueses, for example, are 50 to 200 nm in diameter and have to be kept out of clean rooms.)
Posted on Reply
#42
Palladium
owen10578Just the classic "Oh shit flash prices are getting to cheap, we need to have an accident to raise the prices again"
Years later: This doesn't work anymore now that the Chinese is a major supplier...So it's now to beat the sinophobia drum!
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