Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ: WDC), a global data storage technology and solutions leader, has expanded its WD Gold hard drive lineup to include a 12 TB capacity model, designed to address demanding Big Data workloads. The new high-capacity hard drives provide for increased storage density in a range of enterprise and cloud storage applications. Whether data comes in the form of confidential consumer data, healthcare records or business intelligence, WD Gold hard drives provide a no-compromise storage solution that modern day IT managers need.

"As data growth continues unabated, retaining more of that data and generating meaningful insight from it becomes increasingly important," said Brendan Collins, vice president, Devices business unit, Western Digital. "Businesses that most effectively extract value from operational data are able to make smarter decisions, improve business outcomes and ultimately gain a competitive advantage."

Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) today commented on Toshiba Corporation's ("Toshiba") statement regarding the transfer of its interests in its NAND flash-memory joint ventures operated with Western Digital's SanDisk subsidiaries ("JVs"):

"We are disappointed that Toshiba would take this action despite Western Digital's tireless efforts to reach a resolution that is in the best interests of all stakeholders. Throughout our ongoing dialogue with Toshiba, we have been flexible, constructive and have submitted numerous proposals to specifically address Toshiba's stated concerns. Our goal has been - and remains - to reach a mutually beneficial outcome that satisfies the needs of Toshiba and its stakeholders, and most importantly, ensures the longevity and continued success of the JVs.

Furthermore, it is surprising that Toshiba would continue to pursue a transaction with a consortium led by Korea-based SK Hynix Inc. and Bain Capital Japan without SanDisk's consent, as the language in the relevant JV agreements is unambiguous, and multiple courts have ruled in favor of protecting SanDisk's contractual rights. We remain confident in our ability to protect our JV interests and consent rights."

It's been an interesting time if you're an avid reader of memory-related news pieces. Between increasing prices, Toshiba's debacle and subsequent spin-off of their memory division, to Toshiba and Western Digital butting heads regarding acquisition of said spin-off, and today's news, little was left to thread. Now, reports are surfacing that place Western Digital's consortium as being the (as of yet unofficial) winner in the bid for Toshiba's partial spin-off of their memory division. The deal is being valued at $18.3 billion, Japanese news outlet Nikkan Kogyo says, with Toshiba planning to make a formal decision on Wednesday, with the signing of an agreement to come on Sept. 20.

The partial spin-off of Toshiba's memory production business, which should see the company shed around 20% of its memory business production stake, still has a lot of water to run under the bridge. Reports said that Toshiba would be suing Western Digital, which Toshiba said tried to continuously interfere with the bidding process, it seems that Western Digital isn't looking to back down any time soon. Reuters is reporting that Western digital is now looking to Apple to bolster its bidding position by another 50 billion Yen (around $464 million) to increase the likelihood of acceptance.

Granted, that is somewhat of a fraction of Western Digital's $17 to $18 billion bid for the chip business, but any increased amount of investment is likely to only sway the decision towards WD, who has a joint venture with Toshiba towards furthering memory semiconductor technology. Even though Toshiba has already elected a preferred bidder, nothing is closed as of yet. That Western Digital is looking towards Apple is slightly surprising, but begins to look less so the more you think about it: Apple is one of the foremost buyers of memory semiconductors in the industry; pricing for both flash and DDR memory has seen price hikes in the past due to increased production of iPhones, after all. It's in Apple's best interests to have an amenable partner in the memory production business, which is why an Apple aid for Western Digital might turn out advantageous for the company. Toshiba executives, fearing that WD might be angling to eventually take over the chip business (which isn't unreasonable), are demanding that the U.S. company promise to limit the size of its stake in the company. Toshiba's board is now aiming to reach a final agreement with the consortium by Sept. 13.

For some users, having three HDDs of differing capacities in their system isn't the right solution for achieving the storage space they need. Others don't want to have their files uploaded to the cloud, where security and access times to their files may become hindrances. Some people just like to have all their files offline, in a (somewhat) portable medium that achieves up to 360 MB/s sequential read speeds. Enter Western Digital's updated My Book Duo external desktop storage.

RAID-optimized WD Red hard drives (formatted NTFS out of the box) enable those read speeds, and capacities of 4 TB, 6 TB, 8 TB, 12 TB, 16 TB and 20 TB are available. Connectivity-wise, the My Book duo offers USB Type-C and Type-A, while security isn't left out the door, with built-in password protection and 256-bit AES hardware encryption with WD Security software. The unit measures 7.09 x 6.3 x 3.94 inches and weighs between 5.05 to 5.25 pounds depending on drive capacity. The My Book Duo is available now, with pricing at $259.99 for the 4 TB unit, and a maximum of $799.99 for the 20 TB model, all with a three-year warranty.

Western Digital Corp. today announced its successful development of four bits per cell, X4, flash memory architecture offering on 64-layer 3D NAND, BiCS3, technology. Building on its pioneering innovation of X4 for 2D NAND technology and past success in commercializing it, the company has now developed X4 for 3D NAND by leveraging its deep vertical integration capabilities. These include silicon wafer processing, device engineering to provide sixteen distinct data levels in every storage node, and system expertise for overall flash management. BiCS3 X4 technology delivers an industry-leading storage capacity of 768 gigabits on a single chip, a 50 percent increase from the prior 512 gigabit chip that was enabled with the three bits per cell (X3) architecture. Western Digital will showcase removable products and solid-state drives built with BiCS3 X4 and systems capabilities in August at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, California.

"The implementation of X4 architecture on BiCS3 is a significant development for Western Digital as it demonstrates our continued leadership in NAND flash technology, and it also enables us to offer an expanded choice of storage solutions for our customers," said Dr. Siva Sivaram, executive vice president, Memory Technology, Western Digital. "The most striking aspect in today's announcement is the use of innovative techniques in the X4 architecture that allows our BiCS3 X4 to deliver performance attributes comparable to those in BiCS3 X3. The narrowing of the performance gap between the X4 and X3 architectures is an important and differentiating capability for us, and it should help drive broader market acceptance of X4 technology over the next several years."

You must remember the ongoing house of horrors that is Toshiba's financial situation. Granted, it isn't that bad - the company is still managing to push the envelope on its semiconductor production business. Still, I'm sure the company would have liked to not be on the verge of selling out 20% of its memory business production stake - which is one of the company's most profitable divisions to begin with.

Western Digital has introduced new models to its RED and RED PRO line-up of HDDs. The RED series is oriented more towards a NAS environment, though nothing is really stopping you from putting on of these into your system. These use the same HelioSeal technology that WD uses on their enterprise-class drives, which allows the company to increase the capacity of the RED and RED PRO drives by 25%.

The normal RED drive is built for systems with up to 8 drive bays, while the RED PRO is built for systems with up to 16 drive bays. The RED series is more silent, with an internal spindle speed of 5400RPM, while the RED PRO series comes with a 7200RPM speed. This means the PRO series is louder while operating, but also that is has better performance and faster data access times.

Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ:WDC) today announced that several of its SanDisk subsidiaries have filed a Request for Arbitration with the ICC International Court of Arbitration related to three NAND flash-memory joint ventures ("the Flash JVs") operated with Toshiba Corporation ("Toshiba

The arbitration demand seeks among other things an order requiring Toshiba to unwind the transfer to Toshiba Memory, and injunctive relief preventing Toshiba from further breaching the Flash JV agreements by transferring its Flash JV interests, or any interest in an affiliate that holds its Flash JV interests, without SanDisk's consent. Per the provisions of the joint venture agreements, the arbitration will take place in San Francisco, California.

Western Digital chief executive officer Steve Milligan stated, "The Flash JVs have been operated with Toshiba for the past 17 years and have been highly successful for the JV partners and for Japan. We continue to be actively engaged in discussions with Toshiba's stakeholders to ensure that they are fully aware of our joint venture rights and of our desire to work with Toshiba to achieve a favorable outcome for all parties. We firmly believe that we provide Toshiba with the optimal solution to address its challenges, and that we are the best partner to advance its legacy of technology innovation in Japan."

Western Digital Corp. today announced that it has begun shipping its fourth-generation helium-based hard drive with its 12TB HGST-branded Ultrastar He12 hard drive. The Ultrastar He12 12TB hard drive is the next generation of the company's award-winning high capacity enterprise-class drive with HelioSeal technology, providing customers with a data storage solution addressing the expansive information management needs and demanding performance requirements of today's enterprise, cloud and hyperscale workloads.

"We have again raised the bar in enterprise storage with the industry's most advanced and cost-effective highest capacity helium HDD storage solutions," said Mark Grace, senior vice president of devices at Western Digital. "The Ultrastar He12 hard drive advances Western Digital's portfolio leveraging the HelioSeal platform to deliver industry-leading high capacity HDD storage with exceptional power efficiency. Western Digital has shipped over 15M helium-based high capacity drives to date and continues to support our customers with outstanding reliability and Quality of Service (QoS). Our industry-leading data center portfolio enables customers across the spectrum to meet their evolving and dynamic data center demand."

Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ: WDC), a global storage technology and solutions leader, today announced upgrades to its award-winning G-Technology product lines, including the addition of Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C connectivity technologies. The upgrades optimize the speed and performance of these drives, meeting the growing needs of creative professionals who are capturing and transferring vast amounts of high-resolution content.

"G-Technology recognizes the need for a complete workflow solution that takes advantage of the power of Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C," said Sven Rathjen, vice president of marketing, Client Solutions, Western Digital. "The result is a substantial upgrade across several product lines that delivers reliable, fast, and easy-to-use storage solutions to fit the current and future needs of our customers."

Western Digital Corporation, a global storage technology and solutions leader, today introduced its fastest WD brand portable drive yet, the My Passport SSD. Featuring blazing-fast speeds and award-winning design, the new My Passport SSD compliments the company's leading portfolio of My Passport palm-sized storage devices. Designed for content creators and tech enthusiasts, the new My Passport SSD combines exceptional speed and portability to manage massive files on the go.

"The WD brand is focused on delivering fresh, new personal storage devices that offer amazing performance in a beautiful, yet durable design," said Sven Rathjen, vice president of marketing, Client Solutions, Western Digital. "Our fastest portable drive yet, the My Passport SSD is a powerful solution for people who need to move content quickly and easily wherever life takes them."

Western Digital Corporation, a storage industry leader, today announced the availability of the WD Purple 10 TB HDD, the newest member of its high-capacity hard drive line for surveillance applications. According the IHS Markit, anticipated growth of 4K-compliant and high-resolution network cameras over the next few years is driving higher demand for surveillance-class storage to support systems featuring these technologies. With increased capacity and proven leading-edge technology, the WD Purple 10 TB HDD is optimized for 24x7 video surveillance systems and up to 64 high-definition (HD) cameras in home and small business security environments.

"Advanced imaging technology advancements are expanding the value that video surveillance provides for applications ranging from retail and public safety monitoring to smart-city infrastructure, all of which are driving new storage needs," said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing. "Our new 10 TB drive inherits the high performance, reliability and endurance qualities of our WD Purple family, with maximum capacity to offer VARs, integrators and consumers a 4K-ready solution for current and next-generation surveillance systems."

Toshiba may not be dead in the water just yet, but news are dire for the company. After the companyconfirmed it was looking to spin-off its NAND production business so as to sell a minority, 20% stake for much-needed liquidity in the face of amounting debt and multiple management mistakes, reports now announce a much more aggressive stance from the company. It is now apparently looking to sell a majority stake (60%) on the spin-off, in the face of escalating costs and dwindling prospective chances.

Toshiba may be in the ropes for now, but WD, one of its foremost partners (mainly due to its SanDisk acquisition) and most interested party in Toshiba's NAND spin-off efforts, has just announced that it is world first in actually producing a 64-Layer 512 Gb TLC NAND die. WD is developing and producing this 64-layer NAND at its Yokkaichi, Japan fab which it operates alongside - you guessed it - Toshiba, under their joint Flash Forward venture, though there is no indication as to when the new dies will hit full production. The addition of the latest BiCS3 iteration indicates that, despite its recent challenges and snags, Toshiba continues to execute on its semiconductor roadmap, which is certain to be a boon in keeping the value of its NAND production capabilities in the face of the confirmed spin-off and sell-off of a 20% stake on its NAND production business.

There has been some difficulty in achieving any significant ramp-up in 3D NAND production over at the WD-Toshiba venture, with WD having announced a 256 Gb version of the same BiCS 3 technology it employs on the new 512 Gb die last year, to no considerable volume of production. That's one of the reasons for the current NAND shortage and price rises, among other factors, so let's hope all goes well in this ramp up. If all goes well, 1 TB SSD's with 512 Gb TLC NAND dies for $150?

Backblaze has just revealed their HDD failure rates statistics, with updates regarding 2016's Q4 and full-year analysis. These 2016 results join the company's statistics, which started being collected and collated in April 2013, to shed some light on the most - and least reliable - manufacturers. A total of 1,225 drives failed in 2016, which means the drive failure rate for 2016 was just 1.95 percent, a improving over the 2.47 percent that died in 2015 and miles below the 6.39 percent that hit the garbage bin in 2014.

Organizing 2016's failure rates by drive size, independent of manufacturer, we see that 3 TB hard drives are the most reliable (with 1,40% failure rates), with 5 TB hard drives being the least reliable (at a 2,22% failure rate). When we organize the drives by manufacturer, HGST, which powers 34% (24,545) of the total drives (71,939), claims the reliability crown, with a measly 0,60% failure rate, and WDC bringing up the rear on reliability terms, with an average 3,88% failure rate, while simultaneously being one of the least represented manufacturers, with only 1,626 HDDs being used from the manufacturer.

In an AMD-like move to generate more short-term liquidity so as to strengthen its somewhat precarious position, Toshiba may be moving towards one of the most interesting shakeups in the NAND production field: a possible spin-off of its NAND production business into a separate company.

This move to restructure comes in the wake of recent snags and strategic mistakes for the company - such as the $1.2 billion dollar accounting "misstated" earnings, which created difficulties for the company to refinance itself in the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Also not negligible was a gross miscalculation on the amount of debt of the CB&I Stone and Webster company that Toshiba acquired so as to facilitate its U.S.-based Westinghouse Electric nuclear plant subsidiary investment. This "miscalculation", where Toshiba considered the "goodwill" booking charges at $87 million, where recently restated as a roughly-defined "several billion U.S. dollars."

Western Digital has announced the WD Black PCIe SSD, their first PCIe SSD for the consumer market. This particular SSD is aimed at the cheaper half of the M.2 PCIe SSD market rather than competing for the highest performance: it will be available in 256GB and 512GB capacities for $109 and $199.99 respectively, making it cheaper than any currently available M.2 PCIe SSD except the Intel 600p.

Western Digital Corp. today further expanded its data center SSD and HDD portfolio with the introduction of next-generation storage solutions designed to help IT managers address the intensive data and extreme performance demands of today's enterprise, cloud and hyperscale workloads.

The new solutions include the blazingly fast HGST-branded Ultrastar SN200 NVMe-compatible PCIe solid-state drive (SSD) series, which offers class-leading random read performance of up to 1.2 million IOPS in key workloads, and the company's fastest and highest capacity SAS SSD to date, the HGST-branded Ultrastar SS200 Series SSD. The company also introduced its fourth-generation helium-based HelioSeal enterprise-class hard disk drive (HDD), the 12TB HGST-branded Ultrastar He12 drive. Additionally, the company announced it will extend the He12 platform to 14TB, leveraging Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR).

WDLabs, a business growth incubator and accelerator of storage solutions leader Western Digital Corporation, today announced availability of the WD PiDrive Foundation Edition products, which combine microSD card and USB drive functionality with operating system installation software to provide the Raspberry Pi community an integrated and highly affordable storage system solution for fast project creation.

"It is similar to about 30 years ago when hard disk drives went mainstream in PCs - no more swapping floppy disks in and out to load the OS, applications and data," said Dave Chew, chief engineer, WDLabs. "This third generation WD PiDrive solution uses a USB HDD or USB Flash drive to run the OS and host multiple Raspberry Pi projects instead of having to do this on a collection of microSD cards. We have combined our technologies to work as a team."

Western Digital Corporation today announced WD Blue and WD Green solid state drives (SSDs), the first WD-branded SATA client SSDs. The new SSDs complement the company's industry leading family of hard drives for PCs and workstations, providing a full portfolio of WD storage devices for virtually any application.

The ultimate solution for building DIY PCs, extending the life of current PCs or upgrading existing storage, the WD Blue and WD Green SSDs boast near-maximum speed of SATA drives, best-in-class endurance and MTBF and WD Functional Integrity Testing (F.I.T.) Lab certification, resulting in quick boot times and increased program responsiveness. Consumers benefit from the combination of reliable storage with an industry-leading 1.75M hours MTTF, coupled with reduced power and less heat when compared to HDDs. Both include free, downloadable, WD SSD Dashboard software, which allows continuous performance and capacity monitoring. For consumers who are looking for instant-on responsiveness, durability, low power consumption, and ultra-thin, ultramobile form factors, the WD Blue and WD Green SSDs are the perfect options.

Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) today announced that its popular HGST-branded Ultrastar SN150 PCI Express (PCIe) NVMe solid state drive (SSD) is now certified for use with VMware Virtual SAN and vSphere. Optimized for easy set-up, the Ultrastar SN150 SSD for VMWare environments reduces latency, and brings hyperscale-level performance and enhanced Quality of Service (QoS) time to virtualized servers and cloud storage. This can significantly lower the total cost of ownership of VMware storage environments over traditional storage architectures by reducing performance tuning and field support costs. In server-side environments where VMware virtualization management is utilized, the Ultrastar SN150 is an ideal option for data center managers building or deploying systems on VMware Virtual SAN or vSphere.

Part of Western Digital's HGST-branded Ultrastar data center storage solutions family, the certified Ultrastar SN150 is available in a low-profile, half-height, half-length (HHHL), add-in card form factor and is one of the first NVMe SSDs in the industry to utilize VMware's in-box NVMe driver. For data center administrators, this helps eliminate the hassle of time-consuming downloads and configurations, and allows faster deployment. The Ultrastar SN150 drive is available in capacities ranging from 1120GB1 to 3820GB and offers speeds which exceed Virtual SAN's highest performance class (Class F) specifications, enabling it to easily address the heaviest data workloads in a variety of virtualized server and storage configurations, including all-flash and hybrid configurations utilizing flash for caching and hard disk drives for storage capacity.

Western Digital Corporation, a world leader in storage solutions, today announced a new, high-capacity configuration of up to 10TB for its award-winning WD Gold datacenter hard drives. Designed for modern enterprise storage systems, WD Gold 10 TB datacenter hard drives feature HelioSeal helium-technology for high capacity, power efficient storage for datacenter environments.

WD Gold datacenter hard drives are designed for a broad range of applications - including small- to medium-scale enterprise servers and storage, and rack-mount datacenter servers and storage enclosures. WD Gold 10 TB datacenter hard drives feature an optimized design over the existing WD Gold 8 TB drives that helps reduce TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of servers and storage systems through an 8 percent operating power reduction while delivering 25 percent more capacity. This benefits IT administrators challenged with keeping up with growing storage demands on limited budgets.

Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) today announced the appointment of Mark Long to oversee the company's finance organization as executive vice president, finance, in addition to his role as chief strategy officer. Long will succeed Olivier Leonetti as chief financial officer on Sept. 1, 2016. Leonetti is leaving the company to pursue other opportunities but will continue as CFO through Sept. 1, 2016, reporting to CEO Steve Milligan, and will oversee the completion of the company's fiscal year-end reporting requirements. He will continue in an advisory role to the CEO through Oct. 1, 2016.

"The company is going through a strategic and organizational transformation with the integration of our HGST and WD subsidiaries as well as integrating the recently completed acquisition of SanDisk," said Milligan. "Although in the early stages, we are already seeing the benefits of these strategic steps. As we build on our strategy-driven focus in a tightly integrated manner, it is the right time to combine the strategy and finance organizations and Mark Long is the right leader of this integrated team, with his extensive experience in financial and strategic planning. Olivier Leonetti has made a tremendous contribution to Western Digital in nearly two years as CFO. He played a key role through the successful planning, financing and completion of the SanDisk acquisition. The company is grateful for his contribution and his continued stewardship of our finances through the fiscal year-end reporting process."

Western Digital Corporation, a global storage technology and solutions leader, today introduced the WD Pro Series: My Passport Wireless Pro Wi-Fi mobile storage and My Cloud Pro Series network attached storage (NAS). Designed specifically for the creative community, the WD Pro Series enables seamless transfer of content between devices, with classic WD reliability and speed, regardless of whether users are on a remote shoot, in the studio or editing at home. The products use the My Cloud mobile app - the new version of the app will be launched with the My Passport Wireless Pro and My Cloud Pro Series and be compatible with the Adobe Creative Cloud. In addition, both the My Passport Wireless Pro and My Cloud Pro Series devices are also compatible with the Plex Media Server and My Cloud OS 3 software for easy editing, streaming and sharing of content.

"Portability, reliability, capacity, speed and interoperability are crucial for creative professionals, whose very livelihoods rely on the strength of the technology they use to store their life's work," said Sven Rathjen, vice president of marketing for content solutions at WD. "We created the WD Pro Series as a comprehensive, feature-rich storage solution designed to fit seamlessly into their workflow, regardless of where the work actually happens, so storage, transfer, back-up, editing and even streaming options are readily available."