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."

Western Digital Corporation, a world leader in storage solutions, today announced the expansion of its award-winning color portfolio with a new line; WD Gold datacenter hard drives. 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 drives are currently available at select U.S. distributors, resellers and through the WD Store.

With purpose-driven designs for the datacenter, WD Gold datacenter hard drives are launching with a new, high-capacity configuration of up to 8TB that offers HelioSeal helium-technology for performance, ideal capacity per square foot, power efficiency and low power consumption for datacenter environments. WD Gold datacenter hard drives feature an optimized design with an 8TB option that helps reduce the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of servers and storage systems, benefiting IT administrators challenged with growing storage capacity needs on limited budgets. WD Gold hard drives will also include a premium dedicated support line for customers worldwide.

Western Digital Corporation, a world leader in storage solutions, today announced the expansion of its award-winning portfolio of performance storage solutions with 8 TB capacity drives for NAS, video surveillance and desktop external applications. Increasingly centralized, rich-content, which continues to grow in popularity among enterprises, small business and consumers alike, is driving demand for greater storage capacities.

Launching throughout the first half of 2016, My Cloud personal storage devices (My Cloud, My Cloud Mirror, My Cloud EX2 Ultra), My Book external hard drives (My Book, My Book for Mac, My Book Duo and My Book Pro), WD Red, WD Red Pro and WD Purple hard drives will all be designed with the new high-capacity configuration. Each storage solution offers purpose-driven engineering and HelioSeal helium-technology with the new 8 TB drives for maximum and efficient performance in the applications for which each model is designed.

Western Digital Corporation, a world leader in connected storage solutions, today updated its prosumer solutions with My Cloud EX2 Ultra, a high-performance, two-bay network attached storage (NAS) system. The My Cloud EX2 Ultra NAS is designed from the ground up for creative professionals and prosumers that need to automatically sync content across computers, easily share files and folders and enjoy multiple backup options so they can create their own personalized digital library with ease.

"We know our My Cloud users, especially creative professionals, need comprehensive solutions as digital storage needs continue to soar as well as the need for ongoing streaming capability," said Jim Welsh, executive vice president, WD Branded Products. "With the My Cloud EX2 Ultra, creative professionals are able to combine high performance with multi-tasking optimization and data protection to create a NAS system that simplifies their workflow and provides peace-of-mind."

This week on TechPowerUp News: New AMD CPUs and APUs hit the stores; Seagate served a class-action lawsuit over false reliability claims of its hard drives; and more details of AMD "Zen" architecture.

Hard drive major Seagate has been hit with a class action lawsuit, accusing it of abnormally high failure rates for its 1.5 TB and 3 TB internal and external/portable hard drives. It also accuses the company of false claims over "reliability" and "dependability" in its marketing.

The lawsuit cites data aggregated by cloud solutions company Backblaze. According to this data, a 3 TB Seagate hard drive is three times as likely to fail, as a Western Digital (WD) 3 TB hard drive. It's also ten times as likely to fail as a Hitachi drive. The data appears to look at percentage failure rate, and not raw failed drive volumes, so market-share and volumes shipped by each company is not relevant. Seagate is yet to respond to the lawsuit.

Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) today reported revenue of $3.3 billion and net income of $251 million, or $1.07 per share, for its second fiscal quarter ended Jan. 1, 2016. On a non-GAAP basis, net income was $374 million, or $1.60 per share. In the year-ago quarter, the company reported revenue of $3.9 billion and net income of $438 million, or $1.84 per share. Non-GAAP net income in the year-ago quarter was $539 million, or $2.26 per share.

The company generated $598 million in cash from operations during the second fiscal quarter, ending with total cash and cash equivalents of $5.4 billion. On Nov. 3, 2015 the company declared a cash dividend of $0.50 per share of its common stock, which was paid on Jan. 15, 2016.

"We continue to execute well as we manage our business within an increasingly challenging global economic environment," said Steve Milligan, chief executive officer. "Despite a lower-than-expected hard drive total available market, we reported revenue and EPS within our guidance range, with non-GAAP gross margin of 28.5 percent. We also had strong free cash flow performance of $449 million. Our storage shipments for the December quarter grew to 69.1 exabytes."

In this week's TechPowerUp News - WD's whopping $19 billion acquisition of NAND flash major SanDisk and what it could mean for both brands, MSI's insanely powerful all-in-one gaming desktop; and a fully-integrated NUC desktop by Intel following three generations of the revolutionary platform. Also, an exclusive sneak peek at SilverStone's Raven RVX01 mid-tower case!

WD, a Western Digital company, today introduced the My Book Pro storage device, providing professionals and enthusiasts who must efficiently manage large amounts of digital content with up to 435 MB/s transfer rates on WD's fastest external storage solution yet.

With capacity options including 6 TB, 8 TB, 10 TB and 12 TB, the power of two 7200 RPM WD drives with Intel's Thunderbolt 2 technology and a hot-swappable hardware RAID controller, the My Book Pro device enables creative professionals and enthusiasts alike to focus on what they love doing by significantly cutting the time to transfer large videos, photos and audio files.

WD, a Western Digital company and a worldwide leader in storage solutions, and Milestone Systems, the security industry leader in video management software, announced today a partnership to deliver video surveillance solutions to businesses and consumers. The two companies will demonstrate these solutions at IFA Berlin, booth No. 103, Hall 11.2, Sept. 4 to 9; and at ASIS International, Anaheim, Calif., booth No. 3222, Sept. 28 to Oct. 1.

Milestone Arcus Surveillance software will be available on WD's My Cloud Business Series network-attached storage (NAS) systems with the new My Cloud OS 3 operating system beginning this month; and is expected to be available on other My Cloud systems, such as the My Cloud Expert Series, in the future.

WD, a Western Digital company, and world leader in storage solutions, today announced the expansion of its award-winning WD Red Pro hard drive line with the release of 5 TB and 6 TB capacities. The WD Red Pro family is ideal for NAS (network attached storage) systems having up to 16 drive bays and serving businesses with more expansive storage needs than the standard WD Red drives.

Shipping now, WD Red Pro 5 and 6 TB drives leverage an enhanced design and 128 MB cache to deliver data transfer rates of 214 megabytes per second (MB/s). WD's NASware 3.0 features technology promoting data protection, high NAS performance and reliable integration. "WD is providing customers a full portfolio of high capacity NAS storage solutions (WD Red and WD Red Pro) for home, consumer and business NAS solutions," said Cindi Grace, senior vice president of WD storage technology group. "With the capacity expansion, there is now a path for customers to increase the storage density of their systems while knowing their data is protected with the most trusted and valued brand on the market."

WD, a Western Digital company and a world leader in hard drives, today announced the expansion of its award-winning WD Black line of performance hard drives up to 6 TB capacity. Shipping now, the 3.5-inch, 7200 RPM drive is the perfect solution for gamers and professionals in need of high-performance desktop systems and workstations.

WD Black hard drives combine 7200 RPM spin speed, 128 MB cache, dual stage actuator technology, SATA 6 gigabits per second (Gb/s) interface, and an integrated dual processor to deliver ultimate performance in a maximum-capacity drive. The WD Black 6TB is up to 29% faster than the previous WD Black 4TB version in maximum data rate throughput and 10% faster in PCMark Vantage.

WD, a Western Digital company, and world leader in storage solutions, today announced the new My Passport Cinema 4K Ultra HD (UHD) movie storage device, an easier and faster way to organize, store and enjoy high-definition digital movies and TV shows - including new releases in up to full 4K UHD resolution with high dynamic range (HDR) - on Samsung SUHD TVs and other VIDITY-enabled devices.

The new My Passport Cinema drive utilizes VIDITY technology to allow users to experience movies in crystal-clear, true 4K UHD picture and immersive audio. Users are able to enjoy 8.3 million pixels of stunning entertainment in minutes by simply plugging in the My Passport Cinema drive into a VIDITY-compatible UHD TV or device and purchasing preloaded1 movies from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment. Once purchased on the My Passport Cinema drive, the movie can be accessed immediately online or offline on any VIDITY-enabled device such as Samsung's 2014 HU series 4K UHD TVs and 2015 JU and JS series 4K UHD and SUHD TVs. Users also can download additional titles via M-GO or other VIDITY retailers.

Helping the world harness the power of data, HGST, a Western Digital company (NASDAQ: WDC) today announced the first enterprise-class 10TB (terabyte) hard disk drive (HDD) for next-generation active archive applications. The host-managed Ultrastar Archive Ha10 SMR HDD sets a new standard in enabling the world's densest server and storage systems with unprecedented TCO levels. This industry-defining product is the result of combining two complementary technologies - HGST's second generation, field-proven HelioSeal platform and shingled magnetic recording (SMR) - to deliver unmatched storage density and power efficiency, without compromising reliability and performance predictability. With an industry-leading 10TB capacity, the Ultrastar Archive Ha10 gives customers a time-to-market capacity advantage for archival environments and applications where data is sequentially written and randomly read, such as social media, cloud storage, online backup, life sciences as well as media and entertainment.

HGST recognizes SMR as core technology necessary in driving areal density increases. By overlapping or "shingling" the data tracks on top of each other, higher areal density can be achieved within the same physical footprint. Based on feedback from customers whose data center environments demand predictable performance and control of how data is handled, HGST has implemented a host-managed SMR solution. The sequential write behavior of host-managed SMR complements active archive workloads.

WD, a Western Digital company, and world leader in storage solutions, today introduced the new, redesigned My Passport Ultra portable hard drives and My Passport for Mac drives. With the My Passport line now in its 7th generation, the My Passport Ultra and My Passport for Mac portable hard drives are now available in capacities up to 3 TB and in four stylish colors - Classic Black, Brilliant White, Wild Berry and Noble Blue. WD is also introducing a new optional accessory - WD Grip Pack - a soft band, available in a variety of colors, which encircles the drive, offering consumers an easy way to personalize their My Passport drives.

"With more photos being taken than ever before, it's critical to have a high capacity, reliable external storage solution that you can carry everywhere," said Tony Tate, general manager and vice president of Content Storage Solutions at WD. "The latest generation My Passport drives deliver an easier automatic back-up experience, hardware-based encryption for security and higher capacities than ever before. Consumers can keep all their content in their pockets, while expressing their personal styles with the colors and WD Grip Pack."

Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) today announced that the board of directors declared a cash dividend for the quarter ending July 3, 2015, of $0.50 per share of common stock (the "cash dividend"). The cash dividend will be paid on July 15, 2015, to the company's stockholders of record as of July 3, 2015.

The amount of future dividends under the company's dividend policy, and the declaration and payment thereof, will be based upon all relevant factors, including the company's financial position, results of operations, cash flows, capital requirements and restrictions under the company's existing credit agreement, and shall be in compliance with applicable law. The board retains the power to modify, suspend or cancel the company's dividend policy in any manner and at any time as it may deem necessary or appropriate in the future.

Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) today reported revenue of $3.5 billion and net income of $384 million, or $1.63 per share, for its third fiscal quarter ended Apr. 3, 2015. On a non-GAAP basis, net income was $441 million or $1.87 per share. In the year-ago quarter, the company reported revenue of $3.7 billion and net income of $375 million, or $1.55 per share. Non-GAAP net income in the year-ago quarter was $470 million, or $1.94 per share.

The company generated $684 million in cash from operations during the third fiscal quarter, ending with total cash and cash equivalents of $4.8 billion. It utilized $240 million to repurchase 2.2 million shares of common stock. On Feb. 3, the company declared a cash dividend of $0.50 per share of its common stock, which was paid on Apr. 16. "I am satisfied with our execution and results in light of current PC demand challenges that were largely driven by weak macro-economic conditions," said Steve Milligan, president and chief executive officer. "We delivered a solidly profitable quarter with continued strong cash generation, improved average selling price and healthy gross margins.

WD, a Western Digital company and storage industry leader, today introduced WD Purple NV, a purpose-built line of 3.5-inch, high-capacity 4 TB and 6 TB hard drives for the greater demands of scalable network video recorder (NVR) surveillance systems.

Compared with standard WD Purple drives, the new member of the WD's surveillance video recording family of drives, WD Purple NV, is designed for larger-scale network surveillance systems utilizing higher hard drive bay counts and greater numbers of attached cameras, which demand increased storage capacity and durability. The new drives' high capacities also enable long video retention periods for analysis and reference. WD Purple NV is also designed to withstand the demands of always-on digital NVR recording environments. It offers low power consumption and many advanced performance features typically reserved for higher end surveillance storage.

WD, a Western Digital company, and world leader in storage solutions, today introduced the My Passport X portable hard drive for gamers. When connected to Xbox One or a PC, the sleek 2 TB My Passport X drive provides much-needed storage capacity for gamers to store up to 50 extra game titles, eliminating the need to delete previously purchased games from their Xbox One or PC hard drives and removing those "storage full" warning messages while allowing players to get back to their games. In addition to added storage, gamers can use My Passport X to take saved games to use on friends' systems2 without having to download.

"Game file sizes are expanding to 36 GB per game and upwards, and are projected to continue growing," said Tony Tate, vice president and general manager of WD's Content Solutions unit. "Console gamers are able to store on average only 10 games on the 365 GB out of 500 GB that is available on the onboard hard drive. The My Passport X portable drive delivers a fast and easy way to expand capacity and enables an expanded library of games on the go."

WD, a Western Digital company and world leader in storage today introduced new datacenter hard drives that deliver to today's modern datacenter architects the lowest power consumption of any high-capacity 3.5-inch hard drive available today. The WD Re+ hard drive family is the newest component of WD's full, tiered portfolio of high-capacity datacenter storage devices. Further expanding that portfolio will be 6 terabyte (TB) capacities for WD's popular WD Re and WD Se datacenter product lines, providing customers a spectrum of capabilities, tiered to their varied demands of application intensity, power optimization and cost efficiency.

In the modern datacenter, the total cost of ownership (TCO) formula is comprised of capacity, price, power consumption and the relationships between these variables. The WD Re+ drive provides the most power efficient and high-intensity high-capacity platform available today. With power consumption a primary consideration in today's large web-scale cloud infrastructures, and the WD Re+ drive consuming only 6 watts for 6 TB, customers' TCOs increase and savings for large deployments could be millions of dollars per year.

Russian cyber-security company Kaspersky Labs exposed a breakthrough U.S. spying program, which taps into one of the most widely proliferated PC components - hard drives. With the last 5 years seeing the number of hard drive manufacturing nations reduce from three (Korean Samsung, Japanese Hitachi and Toshiba, and American Seagate and WD) to one (American Seagate or WD), swallowing-up or partnering with Japanese and Korean businesses as US-based subsidiaries or spin-offs such as HGST, a shadow of suspicion has been cast on Seagate and WD.

According to Kaspersky, American cyber-surveillance agency, the NSA, is taking advantage of the centralization of hard-drive manufacturing to the US, by making WD and Seagate embed its spying back-doors straight into the hard-drive firmware, which lets the agency directly access raw data, agnostic of partition method (low-level format), file-system (high-level format), operating system, or even user access-level. Kaspersky says it found PCs in 30 countries with one or more of the spying programs, with the most infections seen in Iran, followed by Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Mali, Syria, Yemen and Algeria.

Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) today reported revenue of $3.9 billion and net income of $460 million, or $1.93 per share, for its second fiscal quarter ended Jan. 2, 2015. On a non-GAAP basis, net income was $539 million or $2.26 per share. In the year-ago quarter, the company reported revenue of $4.0 billion and net income of $430 million, or $1.77 per share. Non-GAAP net income in the year-ago quarter was $532 million, or $2.19 per share.

The company generated $243 million in cash from operations during the December quarter, net of the Seagate arbitration award payment of $773 million, ending with total cash and cash equivalents of $4.9 billion. During the December quarter, the company utilized $309 million to repurchase 3.2 million shares of common stock. On Nov. 4, the company declared a $0.40 per common-share dividend, which was paid on Jan. 15.