Western Digital Completes Planned Company Separation

[btarunr]

Western Digital (Nasdaq: WDC) announced the successful completion of the planned separation of the company's Flash business. Earlier this month, Western Digital held its Investor Day event where the company shared its vision, strategy and plan to enable its customers to unleash the power and value of data. Looking ahead, Western Digital Chief Executive Officer Irving Tan shares how the future of HDDs begins now here in his latest blog post.



The Western Digital executive leadership team includes:

• Irving Tan, Chief Executive Officer
• Wissam Jabre, Chief Financial Officer (until Feb. 28, 2025)
• Don Bennett, Interim Chief Financial Officer (effective Feb. 28, 2025)
• Scott Davis, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer
• Vidya Gubbi, Chief of Global Operations
• Katie Watson, Chief Human Resources Officer
• Cynthia Tregillis, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary
• Sesh Tirumala, Chief Information Officer
• Shantnu Sharma, Chief Strategy and Corporate Development Officer

The Western Digital Board of Directors consists of:

• Martin Cole, newly appointed Board Chair
• Matthew Massengill, outgoing Board Chair
• Kimberly Alexy
• Tunç Doluca
• Bruce Kiddoo (newly appointed director)
• Roxanne Oulman (newly appointed director)
• Stephanie Streeter
• Irving Tan

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[lexluthermiester]

This seems like a bad move to me..

 

[azrael]

It's somewhat puzzling that WD, the biggest name in storage, relinqueshes the branding for what is likely the prominent storage tech (at least for now) to SanDisk to (again) focus on yesterday's storage tech. I can't quite figure out, though, if this separation also means that WD no longer owns SanDisk (somewhat akin to ASUS and ASRock).

 

[lexluthermiester]

It's somewhat puzzling that WD, the biggest name in storage, relinqueshes the branding for what is likely the prominent storage tech (at least for now) to SanDisk to (again) focus on yesterday's storage tech. I can't quite figure out, though, if this separation also means that WD no longer owns SanDisk (somewhat akin to ASUS and ASRock).

There seems to be a myth that hard drives are obsolete. This is not true. Until SSD's catch up to HDD's in high capacity AND cost per GB, HDD's will still reign supreme for mass storage.

 

[Wirko]

There seems to be a myth that hard drives obsolete. This is not true. Until SSD's catch up to HDD's in high capacity AND cost per GB, HDD's will still reign supreme for mass storage.

Cost, sure. But capacity? HDDs will hardly ever catch up again with SSDs. And density? Most of the largest SSDs are in 2.5" size.

 

[lexluthermiester]

HDDs will hardly ever catch up again with SSDs.

What?!? Ok, show us an 8TB SSD that costs less than $110 or a 16TB SSD that costs than $250. Go on then...
.
.
.
.
Not gonna hold my breath while we wait...

 

[azrael]

There seems to be a myth that hard drives are obsolete. This is not true. Until SSD's catch up to HDD's in high capacity AND cost per GB, HDD's will still reign supreme for mass storage.

I know, and I have the HDDs to prove it. HDDs are still "yesterday's tech". But yeah, cost-wise they're hard to beat currently. I also believe they're better for long-term storage then SSDs. I guess we'll know for sure in a couple of decades.

Cost, sure. But capacity? HDDs will hardly ever catch up again with SSDs. And density? Most of the largest SSDs are in 2.5" size.

What?!? Ok, show us an 8TB SSD that costs less than $110 or a 16TB SSD that costs than $250. Go on then...
.
.
.
.
Not gonna hold my breath while we wait...

@Wirko explicitly states that, cost being excluded, capacity on SSDs has outrun capacity of HDDs. I've yet to see a 60 TB HDD.

 

[TheLostSwede]

It's somewhat puzzling that WD, the biggest name in storage, relinqueshes the branding for what is likely the prominent storage tech (at least for now) to SanDisk to (again) focus on yesterday's storage tech. I can't quite figure out, though, if this separation also means that WD no longer owns SanDisk (somewhat akin to ASUS and ASRock).

They still own Sandisk, the separation is supposed to be on the fab and manufacturing side.

 

[Wirko]

What?!? Ok, show us an 8TB SSD that costs less than $110 or a 16TB SSD that costs than $250. Go on then...

I fully agree about prices (and how could I not agree). But capacity and density... There are 2.5", 61 TB SSDs by several vendors and Nimbus 100 TB SSDs in the same 3.5" format as HDDs. I suspect Nimbi (Nimbuses?) are made on order and are too costly even for the datacenters but they exist. It seems that manufacturers are able to squeeze almost unlimited amount of NAND chips in a 3.5" enclosure as long as someone is willing to pay for it (and then take care of cooling). Meanwhile, another technological breakthrough is needed for every small increase in HDD capacity.

 

[_roman_]

I hated my wd nvme and those sandisk 2.5 sata ssds.
I won't miss em.

I'm glad all is sold to second hand

They bundle some crappy windows only adobe license for some unknown product with limited time use to their wd nvme. Nothing which annoys me more as adobe and windows only and limited time use.
The sandisk was the worst of many including plextor, crucial, sandisk, adata, crucial.
Second worst adata sata ssd

I cloned my operating system with new partition table and file system on those sata ssds. So i saw the differences. 3 months sandisk, and so on. Highly not recommended sandisk and wd

My backup strategy for years

 

[Wirko]

Another thought... It's surprising that there's no Eastern Digital counterpart to the approximately three Western HDD makers. China sure has a lot of data to store (about its own citizens, and more). Yet they aren't developing this "yesterday's" tech, neither for their own use nor for selling to the world.

 

[Vayra86]

So now there will be one company called Western, and the other Digital?

Nice.

 

[Athena]

WD did say they have a roadmap for 80-100TB HDs in about 5 years, then after that, HDMR tech will kick in for >100TB

however, by that time, there are going to be so many layers on NAND, there is going to be a swing where NAND based devices should be much cheaper.

I wouldn't be shocked to see 100TB SSDs be around the $2K mark by then, instead of the $40K they are now

 

[Wirko]

WD did say they have a roadmap for 80-100TB HDs in about 5 years, then after that, HDMR tech will kick in for >100TB

however, by that time, there are going to be so many layers on NAND, there is going to be a swing where NAND based devices should be much cheaper.

I wouldn't be shocked to see 100TB SSDs be around the $2K mark by then, instead of the $40K they are now

My clairvoyance is highly limited but there's one thing I know: tech forums will still be full of angry posts saying, "I won't buy this until it's half cheaper!"

 

[lexluthermiester]

I've yet to see a 60 TB HDD.

No, but a 60+TB array of HDDs can easily be put together and for a small fraction of the cost it would take for the same capacity of NAND. No matter how we look at it, HDDs are still the overwhelming king of data storage and that is not going to change anytime soon.

I fully agree about prices (and how could I not agree). But capacity and density... There are 2.5", 61 TB SSDs by several vendors and Nimbus 100 TB SSDs in the same 3.5" format as HDDs. I suspect Nimbi (Nimbuses?) are made on order and are too costly even for the datacenters but they exist. It seems that manufacturers are able to squeeze almost unlimited amount of NAND chips in a 3.5" enclosure as long as someone is willing to pay for it (and then take care of cooling). Meanwhile, another technological breakthrough is needed for every small increase in HDD capacity.

Ah I see. Yes on physical size you have a very valid point. However, for anyone who want's the space a HDD can offer, they go into the purchase knowing they will be needing a housing structure to hold them, so it's always a part of the plan and thinking.

My clairvoyance is highly limited but there's one thing I know: tech forums will still be full of angry posts saying, "I won't buy this until it's half cheaper!"

If that's aimed at my comment, please know I was not intending to be angry. I was more astounded by your response than anything else.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

They still own Sandisk, the separation is supposed to be on the fab and manufacturing side.

Spinning off your fab and manufacturing for FLASH memory, when flash continues to be the way forward, seems very short sighted.

I fully agree about prices (and how could I not agree). But capacity and density... There are 2.5", 61 TB SSDs by several vendors and Nimbus 100 TB SSDs in the same 3.5" format as HDDs. I suspect Nimbi (Nimbuses?) are made on order and are too costly even for the datacenters but they exist. It seems that manufacturers are able to squeeze almost unlimited amount of NAND chips in a 3.5" enclosure as long as someone is willing to pay for it (and then take care of cooling). Meanwhile, another technological breakthrough is needed for every small increase in HDD capacity.

There's another aspect, which is the performance. Once you've done major operations in gigantic SQL databases on flash memory, you'll never want to touch a HDD again.

We switched to all flash for our backend, and the difference is night and day. Backups, restores, updates, ece are so much faster.

 

[lexluthermiester]

They still own Sandisk, the separation is supposed to be on the fab and manufacturing side.

This makes more sense.