In its latest earnings call, Seagate, a manufacturer of high-capacity drives, has revealed several interesting points about its upcoming releases of next-generation hard drives. More specifically, the company has disclosed a shift to a new generation of HDDs based on so-called heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology. This technology is set to bring many improvements compared to the one currently used by Seagate's rivals like Western Digital. The rivaling company uses energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording (ePMR) and microwave-assisted (MAMR) technologies and it already has a 20 TB drive in the offering. Seagate announced that they will unveil a 20 TB HDD in December this year, with the use of HAMR technology, which will bring many improvements like better speed and more efficient disk read/write.

"We remain on track to ship 20-TB HAMR drives starting in December, which is an important milestone, as we believe HAMR technology will be the industry's path to scaling a real density and increasing drive capacities," said Dave Mosley, CEO of Seagate. "Seagate will be the first to ship this crucial technology with a path to deliver 50-TB HAMR drives forecast in 2026."

Empowering the world's most essential data infrastructures, Western Digital Corp. today announced that Dropbox Inc., a leading global collaboration platform, is one of the first to qualify the Ultrastar DC HC650 20 TB, host-managed, shingled magnetic recording (SMR) hard disk drives (HDD). With Western Digital SMR HDDs serving as the storage foundation for its custom-built, multi-exabyte storage platforms, Dropbox continues its strategic path, taking advantage of the highest storage densities with the lowest TCO without sacrificing data durability and availability for its 600 million+ online customers.

"We've been working with Western Digital for many years, and throughout several phases of our storage platform development," said Andrew Fong, vice president of engineering, Dropbox. "Online tools and services are more important than ever before, so we need to be able to quickly innovate, expand functionality and scale to help stay competitive. We look forward to deploying these higher capacity 20 TB SMR hard drives to further our cost savings and to provide our customers with even more value. Western Digital is an important strategic partner and we look forward to continuously pushing cloud infrastructure boundaries together."

Razer, the leading global lifestyle brand for gamers, made October 10, 2020 a day to remember for the global gaming community. Fans across the world tuned in to the inaugural RazerCon to watch Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan's live mixed-reality keynote - a one-of-a-kind interactive session hosted against the iconic Singapore skyline. This was followed by Razer panels on new and unannounced products, and exclusive content showcases and giveaways from game studios such as Romero Games, Perfect World Entertainment, Paradox Interactive and technology partners such as Intel, NVIDIA and Western Digital.

The event was a huge hit with the fans, peaking at over 1 million concurrent viewers with a total of more than 250,000 hours viewed and 175 million impressions across Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch. In a true celebration of all things gaming, highly decorated veterans of the industry, including Brenda and John Romero, and Haz Dullul, presented their newest projects, whilst leading gaming celebrities CloakZy, CourageJD, PaladinAmber and many others engaged with the community during their sessions.

Western Digital Corp. is helping gamers enhance their setups and adapt to the evolving gaming landscape heralded by the next generation of games with today's introduction of three new and upcoming products for its WD_BLACK portfolio of storage solutions. These include its first NVMe solid-state drive (SSD) with next-gen PCIe Gen 4 technology, a fully bootable Gen3 x8 add-in-card and a Thunderbolt 3-powered NVMe SSD gaming dock, each offering eye-catching RGB lighting options.

"As game developers move towards creating immersive titles that require higher performance, consumers need to equip themselves with the best tools to stay up-to-speed," said Jim Welsh, senior vice president, Consumer Solutions, Western Digital. "Innovative, high-performance storage solutions are essential to keep up with this ever-changing landscape. Our latest WD_BLACK products have been purpose-built to allow gamers to meet the increasingly high standards of future games and gaming platforms. We've optimized these products to not only provide more storage for gamers but to elevate the gaming experience as a whole."

Western Digital announced a media event dated October 8, 2020, in which it's expected to announce the next generation of WD_Black line of gaming-grade storage products. Over the years, the WD_Black brand evolved from representing the company's fastest client-segment hard drives to gaming-grade client-segment products, including the company's fastest internal NVMe SSDs, external SSDs for game consoles, and fast external HDDs. Western Digital is expected to unveil its next-generation WD_Black NVMe SSD succeeding the SN750, which could possibly leverage PCI-Express Gen 4. We know this from the three motifs in the teaser image, which denote a desktop PC, notebook, and a console. The media event will be livestreamed on Twitch.

Western Digital Corp. today released two new SanDisk portable SSDs that offer nearly 2x the speed over previous generations. The SanDisk Extreme and SanDisk Extreme PRO portable SSDs are purpose-built to keep up with today's high-quality content demands. Professional photographers, videographers and enthusiasts capture and keep life's best moments every day and they need reliable solutions that perform on the move at astonishing speeds.

With capacities up to 2 TB, the new NVMe drives are perfect for creating amazing content or capturing and moving incredible 4K and 8K footage with ease. The flagship SanDisk Extreme PRO portable SSD features a forged aluminium chassis made to stay cool under the pressure of a heavy workload and a durable silicone design to withstand the rigors of production. The drives also help keep content safe with password protection and an upgrade to 256-bit AES hardware encryption.

Enabling customers to design and build solutions for a variety of smart video workloads, Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) today announced its expanded family of WD Purple storage solutions, including the industry's highest capacity 18 TB surveillance HDD for DVRs, NVRs and analytics appliances, and the 1 TB WD Purple SC QD101 microSD card for AI-enabled cameras. Setting the bar for smart video applications, all WD Purple drives are optimized to help reduce frame loss and pixelation, improve overall video playback and enhance streaming for 24x7 workloads - from ingest to backup and long-term storage - as the industry broadens the use of deep learning and analytics.

From commercial buildings to municipalities, businesses are accelerating adoption of AI and deep learning to enable automation and better efficiencies that ultimately help create a safer and better experience for employees, customers and communities. Deep learning algorithms, hungry for data generated by IoT and edge ecosystems, demand higher resolution for better accuracy, increasing the need for storage capacity in cameras and NVRs. In its recent report, Video Surveillance & Analytics Intelligence Service, July 2020, Omdia states that shipments of cameras enabled with deep learning algorithms will continue growing at a five-year (2019-2024) CAGR of 67 percent, and NVRs enabled with deep-learning analytics will grow at 37 percent. Meanwhile, video analytics appliances shipments are expected to grow at 43 percent. In addition, a 2020 Western Digital-commissioned survey of North American security system integration companies found that 76 percent of them see video analytics and AI as playing an ever-increasing role in their deployments.

Western Digital Corp. today announced a significant step in the ongoing implementation of its diversified storage portfolio strategy by forming separate product business units for its Flash and HDD technology assets. The Flash business and the HDD business will each be led by a general manager and will align the company's diversified portfolio to an acceleration strategy designed for growth, profitability and development agility. By delivering both Flash and HDD market-leading innovation through highly focused product development organizations, Western Digital's strategy positions the company to leverage its strong go-to-market and operational synergies and uniquely address broad customer storage needs from edge devices to cloud infrastructure.

Also today, Western Digital announced the appointment of Robert Soderbery as executive vice president and general manager of its new Flash business unit. A thirty-year technology and business veteran, Soderbery is responsible for all Flash portfolio strategy, product development and business results and will lead engineering and product management teams focused on delivering the company's Flash innovation. The company confirmed an executive search is underway for a general manager who will lead its HDD product business.

Underscoring its mission to enable the world to solve its biggest data challenges by building a data infrastructure with next-gen security, Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) today introduced the ArmorLock Security Platform. A data encryption platform that rethinks how data security should be done, the ArmorLock Security Platform was created to help with the diverse security demands of data-centric and content-critical storage use cases in industries as varied as finance, government, healthcare, IT enterprise, legal, and media and entertainment. As data security concerns continue to rise in visibility, Western Digital plans to apply the platform across a range of storage solutions.

The first product to leverage this advanced technology, the new G-Technology ArmorLock encrypted NVMe SSD, is designed to deliver an easy-to-use, high-performance, high-grade security storage solution for creators in the media and entertainment industry. Facing the threat of hijacked media files and leaked films, studios, agencies, and especially investors are demanding a better way to protect critical content. While much of the industry's focus has been on cloud security, data often remains vulnerable on the portable storage devices holding critical commercial content.

The NAND Flash industry benefitted from strong demand for PCs and servers in 2Q20 as the COVID-19 pandemic caused a demand surge for cloud services and technologies that are related to working from home, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. This, in turn, kept demand high for SSDs. However, the smartphone and consumer electronics markets had not recovered from the impact of the pandemic. The demand for these products therefore declined compared to the previous quarter. In 2Q20, total NAND Flash bit shipment and ASP both experienced a minor increase of about 3% QoQ, while NAND Flash revenue reached US$14.5 billion, a 6.5% increase QoQ.

For consumers who need to accelerate their productivity and protect their valuable content without compromising style, Western Digital Corp. today introduced the new WD brand My Passport SSD in capacities up to 2 TB. With a sleek, compact metal design and blazing fast speeds powered by NVMe technology, the new palm-sized drive allows home and business users to save, access and protect the content that matters.

"The new My Passport SSD delivers the speed, reliability and functionality consumers have come to expect from us," said Susan Park, vice president, Consumer Solutions, Western Digital. "It is a powerful and sophisticated solution for the everyday content creators, curators and hobbyists who need to move files quickly. The rounded corners, waving ridges and soft edges enhance the My Passport SSD's portability and make it easy to carry, yet also distinctly recognizable as a member within WD's award-winning My Passport product line-up."

SiFive, Inc., the leading provider of commercial RISC-V processor IP and silicon solutions, today announced it raised $61 million in a Series E round led by SK hynix, joined by new investor Prosperity7 Ventures, with additional funding from existing investors, Sutter Hill Ventures, Western Digital Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Intel Capital, Osage University Partners, and Spark Capital.

"Global demand for storage and memory in the data center is increasing as AI-powered business intelligence and data processing growth continues", said Youjong Kang, VP of Growth Strategy, SK hynix. "SiFive is well-positioned to grow with opportunities created from data center, enterprise, storage and networking requirements for workload-focused processor IP."

Western Digital Corp. (Nasdaq: WDC) today reported fourth quarter and fiscal year 2020 financial results. "I am extremely proud of the way our team has navigated the complexities and uncertainties inherent in this unprecedented environment, as we continue to adapt to provide supply continuity and high-quality products to our customers and drive value for our shareholders," said David Goeckeler, Western Digital CEO. "While we continue to navigate through a dynamic environment, we remain focused on managing the business for the long-term, including ramping two important product lines to high volume: our SSD products and our energy-assisted capacity enterprise drives. We will continue to deliver the quality, performance and cost-effectiveness our customers rely on, and I am confident that our end market diversity and breadth, broad customer base, channel reach, and innovative leadership all position Western Digital to benefit from the multi-year growth in data creation and storage."

In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020, Western Digital's revenue increased 18% year-over-year to $4.3 billion, led by strength within Data Center Devices & Solutions and Client Devices end markets.

Western Digital announced it is extending the industry's highest capacity Ultrastar HDDs to a selection of its G-Technology products, empowering professionals with powerful, ultra-reliable solutions to manage massive volumes of content for optimized creative workflows. A first for the consumer and professional markets, the 18 TB enterprise-class Ultrastar drives are available in three G-Technology brand product families, including G-DRIVE, G-RAID with Thunderbolt 3, G-SPEED Shuttle with Thunderbolt 3 and G-SPEED Shuttle XL with Thunderbolt 3.

The commercially available enterprise-class 18 TB Ultrastar HDDs deliver the industry's highest areal density by leveraging innovative new technologies including Energy-Assisted Magnetic Recording technology, the industry's first Triple Stage Actuator, and a 9-disk HelioSeal platform. The powerful 7,200 RPM drives come with a 2.5M hours MTBF rating and a 5-year limited warranty.

Continuously innovating to help organizations keep pace with rapidly expanding volumes of data, Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) today announced that it is extending its HDD technology and capacity leadership into its broader portfolio of data center solutions. Leveraging innovations from the Ultrastar 18 TB and 20 TB HDD technology platform, the WD Gold family now features new 16 TB and 18 TB CMR HDD capacities. Also available are an upgraded line of Ultrastar JBOD platforms and an Ultrastar hybrid storage server featuring Ultrastar 16 TB and 18 TB CMR HDDs. Through Western Digital's vertical integration capabilities and broad portfolio, the company continues to be uniquely positioned to help customers meet data demands as they design their storage infrastructures for better efficiency and productivity.

"Western Digital's expanded family of data center HDD solutions clearly addresses a variety of customer needs, which puts them in a unique early position to capitalize on cloud and OEM customer transitions to 18 TB, and even to 20 TB for those optimizing the benefits of SMR," said John Chen, vice president at TRENDFOCUS. "Capacity-enterprise HDDs will continue to dominate the nearline and secondary storage market as there is simply no other cost-effective substitute for data at scale. As a result, we expect nearline disk drive exabytes shipments to grow at a 32.5% CAGR, reaching 1.9 zettabytes by 2024."

Western Digital had already announced the Ultrastar DC HC550 drives back in late 2019, but only now have they actually been released for sale. The new drives make use of CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording), where data is stored in parallel tracks that increase rewriting proficiency of the drives compared to SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording, in which data tracks are overlapped for higher data density). In addition to CMR, Western Digital is employing some form of energy assistance (the EA in EAMR), though the company hasn't slipped many technical details on what kind of energy assistance is actually employed.

The drives are available in either SATA or SAS connections, with a data density of up to 1,022 gigabits per square inch in these 18 TB drives. Nine platters are employed, with speeds rated at 270 MB/s at 7,200 RPM. A 512 MB cache helps increase overall data speeds, and WD is offering their usual 5-year warranty with continuous operation and 550 TBW per year ratings. Street pricing for these Ultrastar DC HC550 18 TB drives seems to over around €630.

Western Digital today announced new solutions that provide the foundation for next-generation data infrastructures designed around Ultrastar NVMe SSDs and supercharged by NVMe-oF. Building upon the company's innovative design and integration capabilities - from NAND Flash to storage platforms - the new dual-port, performance Ultrastar DC SN840 NVMe SSDs and in-house RapidFlex NVMe-oF controllers are standalone solutions that combine to create the new OpenFlex Data24 NVMe-oF Storage Platform, a new shared storage JBOF (Just a Bunch of Flash) enclosure that extends the value of NVMe to multiple hosts over a low-latency Ethernet fabric network. These new solutions further expand Western Digital's data center portfolio to help customers transition to higher efficiency NVMe SSDs and more advanced shared storage architectures to meet the evolving demands of performance-driven applications and workloads.

In today's global digital economy, microseconds count. As hyperscale cloud and enterprise data centers constantly work to remove bottlenecks to ensure uncompromised performance and availability of essential applications, while also keeping pace with unprecedented data growth, customer adoption of NVMe and NVMe-oF solutions continues to accelerate. Industry analyst firm IDC expects hyperscalers, OEMs and end-user IT organizations to continue to transition away from legacy SATA and SAS interfaces, with NVMe on track to reach more than 55 percent of total enterprise SSD units shipped in 2020 and grow at a 2018-2023 CAGR of 38 percent.

We want to thank our customers and partners for your feedback on our WD Red family of network attached storage (NAS) hard drives. Your real-world insights shared through in-depth reviews, blogs, forums and from our trusted partners are directly contributing to our work on an expansion of models and clarity of choice for customers. Please continue sharing your experiences and expectations of our products, as this input influences our development.

Due to the fact that the range of use cases for NAS has become increasingly diverse, we are now making it easier for users to match the right drive with their applications and workloads - from moderate small office/home office (SOHO) workloads to intensive small- and medium-business (SMB) use, as well as more demanding environments.

Western Digital started selling an 18 TB variant of its WD Gold line of "enterprise class" SATA hard drives (model: WD181KRYZ). The WD Gold series tops the company's SATA HDD lineup and its in the gray area between client and scalar enterprise segments, where the company sells its HGST Ultrastar HDDs. WD Gold drives are still rated for 24x7 operation, and can be safely used in large RAID arrays. The drives are confirmed to lack SMR and DM-SMR; and are confirmed to use CMR (conventional magnetic recording), which ensures predictable write speeds and random-write performance. The WD Gold WD181KRYZ features 7,200 RPM spindle speed, HelioSeal technology (the main disk chamber is sealed and filled with inert helium gas), and 2.5 million-hour MTBF. Performance numbers and cache size for the 18 TB model are unknown, but the 14 TB variant in this series offers up to 267 MB/s sequential transfers, and features a 512 MB DRAM write cache. The WD181KRYZ is listed on UK store SCAN for £520.

Western Digital has been hit by a class-action lawsuit over alleged false advertising over some of its WD Red hard drives featuring undocumented DM-SMR (drive-managed shingled magnetic recording), a physical layer data writing technique that maximizes capacity at heavy costs of random write performance, that effectively render the drives unfit for RAID applications that are common with NAS setups. Trouble brewed for Western Digital in April, as a Blocks & Files report exposed presence of SMR on certain popular WD Red drives as an explanation as to why the drives couldn't be added to RAID volumes.

Western Digital initially tried to defend its position by explaining what DM-SMR is, that the standard WD Red has been tested on most SOHO NAS devices, that they're not meant for serious (> 8-drive) NAS setups; and pointing people to their pricier WD Red Pro, or enterprise-segment Ultrastar HDDs, leading to more community backlash. Days later, Western Digital finally came out with a list of its HDDs that use SMR. Bellevue Washington-based Hattis & Lukacs, class-action specialists, are leading the charge against Western Digital, and are inviting aggrieved U.S. residents to join the class.

According to the latest investigations by the DRAMeXchange research division of TrendForce, NAND Flash bit shipment in 1Q20 was relatively on par with 4Q19. The overall ASP of NAND Flash products also climbed during the period. As a result, the global NAND Flash revenue for the quarter went up by 8.3% QoQ to US$13.6 billion.

In 1Q20, demand for enterprise SSDs exceeded supply because cloud service providers' procurement for data centers had been growing progressively since 4Q19. Also, inventories of NAND Flash suppliers mostly returned to normal during the period. Consequently, most NAND Flash products for the major applications experienced a rise in contract prices. As for the impact of COVID-19 during the Lunar New Year, TrendForce's investigations at the time found that the server supply chain managed to make a better recovery than the supply chains for notebook computers and smartphones. The impact of the outbreak on the storage demand from the cloud services sector was thus quite limited. On the other hand, the production of notebooks and smartphones was affected by logistical problems and breakage in the component supply chain. Because of this, notebook and smartphone manufacturers have gradually resumed production since March.

Western Digital Corp. (Nasdaq: WDC) today reported fiscal third quarter 2020 financial results. "I joined Western Digital a little over a month ago because I have strong conviction in the digital transformation that is reshaping every industry, every company and how all of us live our daily lives," said David Goeckeler, Western Digital CEO. "While I couldn't have anticipated the unprecedented series of events that have transpired, I'm very proud of how the company has responded to an extremely dynamic environment with dedicated focus both on our employees' safety as well as delivering our market leading technology to our customers. As the only company in the world to provide a broad array of NAND flash, Solid State Drives (SSD) and Hard Disk Drives (HDD) solutions, I'm confident our innovation will drive significant new value for customers around the world."

We generated $142 million in cash from operations during the fiscal third quarter of 2020 and ended the quarter with $2.9 billion of total cash and cash equivalents. We returned $149 million to shareholders through dividends and used $212 million to reduce debt. On February 13, 2020, we declared a cash dividend of $0.50 per share of common stock, which was paid to shareholders on April 17, 2020. Going forward, we are suspending our dividend to strengthen our reinvestment in growth and innovation and to support our ongoing deleveraging efforts. We will reevaluate our dividend policy as leverage ratios improve.

Western Digital on Tuesday (27/04) announced availability of its WD Purple QD101 line of ultra-endurance microSDXC cards for use as internal storage in surveillance devices, such as smart security cameras. The card implements 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory, is capable of 500 P/E cycles, and 256 TBW for its top of the line 512 GB variant. The card is particularly useful as a failsafe storage device for cameras in case their link to the NVR server is severed, and is rated for 24x7 operation. The card comes in capacities of 32 GB, 64 GB, 128 GB, 256 GB, and 512 GB. The card is now shipping to NVR and smart camera manufacturers.

Western Digital on Thursday (23/04) released an updated statement about the company's stand on SMR (shingled magnetic recording) being used on certain internal hard drives, including certain client-segment WD Red models recommended by the company for NAS applications, without proper disclosure on the product's marketing materials or data-sheets. It's surprising to note that SMR is being used not in some of the higher-capacity models (8 TB or higher) as previously thought, but rather lower-capacity ones, 6 TB or lower, including a 2 TB 3.5-inch drive, and a 1 TB 2.5-incher.

Perhaps SMR is being used in these lower-capacity drives to reduce the number of platters, by cramming in more data per recording surface. As on 22nd April (when the list was internally compiled by Western Digital), there are 9 client-segment hard drives that use SMR, four of which are from the company's WD Red family, two each from the WD Blue 3.5-inch and WD Blue 2.5-inch families; and one from the 2.5-inch WD Black family. Among the WD Red series drives with SMR are the 2 TB WD20EFAX, the 3 TB WD30EFAX, the 4 TB WD40EFAX, and the 6 TB WD60EFAX.

Western Digital gave its first response to allegations of the company implementing SMR (shingled magnetic recording) on its WD Red internal hard drives without properly documenting it. The WD Red series is extensively marketed as being "NAS optimized," which caused many NAS and RAID DAS enthusiasts to pick it up for home-office use, only to discover that the company's implementation of drive-managed SMR (DM-SMR) makes them effectively unfit for RAID use, as DM-SMR is vital for some of the higher-capacity WD Red models to achieve their nameplate capacity, while coming at a heavy cost of random write performance.

"SMR is tested and proven technology that enables us to keep up with the growing volume of data for personal and business use. We are continuously innovating to advance it. SMR technology is implemented in different ways - drive-managed SMR (DMSMR), on the device itself, as in the case of our lower capacity (2 TB - 6 TB) WD Red HDDs, and host-managed SMR, which is used in high-capacity data center applications. Each implementation serves a different use case, ranging from personal computing to some of the largest data centers in the world.," Western Digital writes.