Enabling new lower levels of total cost of ownership (TCO) for cloud and enterprise customers, Western Digital Corporation today introduced the Ultrastar DC HC530 hard drive - at 14TB, no other CMR (conventional magnetic recording) hard drive in the industry offers a higher capacity. The breadth and depth of big data is driving the universal need for higher capacities across a broad spectrum of applications and workloads. Built on Western Digital's fifth-generation HelioSeal technology, the Ultrastar DC HC530 drive is designed for public and private cloud environments where storage density, watt/TB and $/TB are critical parameters for creating the most cost-efficient infrastructure.

The data explosion caused by big data, IoT, artificial intelligence, machine learning, rich content and fast data applications is challenging hyperscale cloud data centers and enterprises to efficiently build massive petabyte-scale infrastructures. This ability to cost-effectively scale-up or scale-out is business critical, not only for cloud service providers but for organizations leveraging big data analytics and machine learning in medical, science, agriculture and other fields seeking innovation, discoveries and unique insights, as well as for creating new business models.

As the adoption of 4K Ultra HD video, emerging artificial intelligence (AI) applications and analytics drive the rapid growth and evolution of data in surveillance, Western Digital Corp. today unveiled the Western Digital Purple microSD card, purpose-built for the complex and dynamic data demands of modern surveillance cameras and edge systems.

Whether it's a business employing surveillance video to keep their assets secure or a retailer utilizing surveillance to accurately analyze shopping behavior through video facial recognition, capturing and assessing every moment is critical. Optimized for 24/7 surveillance video capture, surveillance system operators can count on the robust Western Digital Purple microSD card to support a continuous surveillance workload. With its outstanding performance, the card captures and preserves video in a variety of high-definition and next-generation formats, including 4K Ultra HD video, as well as nimbly supports the movement of data to core data systems for analytics and fast business insights. The rugged and humidity-resistant design of this new card enables trusted video capture in a wide range of environmental conditions, including outdoors in snowy winters and indoors in hot and humid factory settings.

Western Digital Corporation is meeting the escalating fast-transfer and high-capacity demands of professional content creators by enabling real-time 4K and 8K workflows with three new professional-grade ultra-fast solutions in its powerful G-Technology G-DRIVE and G-SPEED Shuttle product families.

Working with large 4K and 8K RAW video means massive file sizes and is undoubtedly one of the largest pain points for content editors. With new cameras capable of capturing over 400 MB/s of RAW data, there is an opportunity for content professionals to create incredibly high-resolution footage and ever-more immersive viewer experiences. It is not uncommon for a production crew to be on-location for two or three months recording three to four terabytes per day of footage from multiple cameras. With this expansion of data capture, comes a potential bottleneck in maintaining a real-time workflow on location - until now.

PC gaming is increasingly immersive, with richer and more intense visual content than ever before, and gamers are faced with making technology choices to maximize their experience. To push leading-edge performance, lower power consumption and extended durability for PC gaming systems, Western Digital Corporation today introduced a high-performance Western Digital Black 3D NVMe SSD featuring the company's own SSD architecture and controller. The drive accelerates data for PC applications to enable users to quickly, access, engage and capture today's high-resolution video, audio and gaming content.

With growing demand for rich content, PCs must have the capability to run intensive applications and enable the 4K/Ultra HD graphics and video content experiences. To move this immense amount of data quickly and seamlessly, Western Digital developed a new breed of SSDs to help remove the traditional storage bottleneck. This M.2 drive features a new NVMe architecture and controller, which optimally integrates with Western Digital 3D NAND. Western Digital's new vertically integrated SSD platform was engineered from the ground up, specifically architected to help maximize performance for NVMe SSDs, with advanced power management, durability and endurance for the growing range of applications benefiting from NVMe technology.

As mobile content and applications grow increasingly sophisticated, Western Digital Corporation is transforming the mobile experience with new industry-leading mobile solutions designed to enable consumers to better capture, share and enjoy rich content on their devices. At Mobile World Congress, the company is releasing the world's fastest UHS-I flash memory card, the 400GB SanDisk Extreme UHS-I microSDXC card, and demonstrating the future of flash memory card technology with Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe)-enabled cards, designed to deliver the performance required for the next wave of data and content-intensive applications.

Whether it's exploring a new world in an immersive virtual reality app, or capturing 4K footage on a smartphone or drone, consumers can count on Western Digital to deliver even more robust mobile flash memory technology that offers them a premium experience on their favorite device.

Addressing the needs of a growing landscape of Internet of Things (IoT) and Fast Data applications at the edge, Western Digital Corporation today announced two new NVMe SSDs - Western Digital PC SN720 and Western Digital PC SN520 - powered by a new NVMe storage architecture, scalable for a range of emerging implementations, from IoT and edge computing to mobile computing systems.

The new Western Digital NVMe client architecture and product portfolio will enable manufacturers of IoT devices, computing devices such as thin and light, 2-in-1 and embedded PCs and monitoring systems to enable the capture and transformation of the massive quantities of data in real-time at the edge of smart city, smart home and personal data environments. Cisco GCI estimates that nearly 850 zettabytes (ZB) will be generated by all people, machines and things by 2021. With the advent of high-bandwidth technologies like 5G, augmented reality and facial recognition, new applications can benefit from the exceptional performance, power efficiency and capacity of NVMe and Western Digital 3D NAND to deliver an optimal user experience.

Known for enabling new levels of enterprise total cost of ownership (TCO) with HelioSeal helium hard drive technology and industry leading capacity drives, Western Digital Corporation is expanding its portfolio for enterprise customers with a new, mid-range series of 4 terabyte (TB), 6TB and 8TB air-based hard drives. The new products enable corporate data centers having data set sizes smaller than found in hyperscale environments to harness the power of data across a broad spectrum of Big Data applications such as analytics and distributed file systems.

Western Digital leads the high-capacity enterprise hard drive market for hyperscale and cloud environments with its 10TB, 12TB and 14TB drives, where the company's HelioSeal helium-sealing technology is required for the highest capacities and densities to deliver the lowest (or best) TCO. However, many applications have small data sets or benefit from optimal performance from implementation of a cluster of lower capacity, air-based hard drives. Many traditional data center systems still rely on moderate capacity points for RAID-based block-and-file systems.

Western Digital Corporation today introduced two new ultra-transportable solutions in its high-powered G-Technology G-SPEED Shuttle product family. The new solutions are designed to meet the demands of professional content creators who need lightning-fast transfer speed and a high-capacity storage solution that can easily be moved from the studio to wherever your project takes you, and back.

The rise of streaming video on demand (SVoD) services is providing many new opportunities for studios, production houses and independent filmmakers. To capitalize on these opportunities, the right tools are crucial. When working in-the-field, production teams need a fast solution that can handle demanding workflows of 4K and 8K content with the ability to collect that precious footage and quickly move the content from location to location.

At today's Consumer Electronics Show 2018 (CES 2018), Western Digital unveiled new and breakthrough consumer solutions that address today's personal content explosion, including voice-activated media streaming via popular Smart Home devices, the world's smallest 1TB USB flash drive and a portfolio of ultra-mobile, high-performance, wireless and high-capacity flash storage products. Sold under the SanDisk and WD brands, these offerings ensure that personal experiences and memories can thrive for years to come.

Smartphones, drones, action cameras and virtual reality (VR) goggles are capturing and creating rich content that users want to access and share with friends and followers alike. Innovations in multi-lens cameras, 8K video, 5G wireless, VR, augmented reality (AR) and video streaming are enabling more immersive experiences. As a result, consumers are looking for easier ways to capture, preserve, access and share their personal content as it becomes richer and more robust.

Western Digital has seemingly been shipping their My Cloud personal network attached storage solutions with an integrated backdoor. It's not really that complicated a backdoor either - a malicious user should always be able to use it. That stems from the fact that it's a hard coded backdoor with unchangeable credentials - logging in to someone's My Cloud is as simple as inputing "mydlinkBRionyg" as the Administrator username and "abc12345cba" as the respective password. Once logged in, shell access is unlocked, which allows for easy injection of commands.

The backdoor has been published by James Bercegay, with GulfTech Research and Development, and was disclosed to Western Digital on June 12th 2017. However, since more than 6 months have passed with no patch or solution having been deployed, the researchers disclosed and published the vulnerability, which should (should) finally prompt WD to action on fixing the issue. Making things even worse, no user action is required to enable attackers to take advantage of the exploit - simply visiting malicious websites can leave the drives wide open for exploit - and the outing of a Metasploit module for this very vulnerability means that the code is now out there, and Western Digital has a race in its hands. The thing is, it needn't have.

Toshiba Corporation, Toshiba Memory Corporation, and Western Digital Corporation have entered into a global settlement agreement to resolve their ongoing disputes in litigation and arbitration, strengthen and extend their relationship, and enhance the mutual commitment to their ongoing flash memory collaboration.

As part of this agreement, TMC and Western Digital will participate jointly in future rounds of investment in Fab 6, the state-of-the-art memory fabrication facility now under construction at Yokkaichi, including the upcoming investment round announced by Toshiba in October 2017. Fab 6 will be entirely devoted to the mass production of BiCS FLASH, the next-generation of 3D flash memory, starting next year. TMC and Western Digital similarly intend to enter into definitive agreements in due course under which Western Digital will participate in the new flash wafer fabrication facility which will be constructed in Iwate, Japan.

The parties will strengthen their flash memory collaboration by extending the terms of their joint ventures. Flash Alliance will be extended to December 31, 2029 and Flash Forward to December 31, 2027. Flash Partners was previously extended to December 31, 2029.

Western Digital today announced the results of its first annual "The Growing Role of Object Storage in Solving Unstructured Data Challenges" survey conducted in collaboration with 451 Research. Two hundred enterprise and service provider decision makers and influencers participated in the September 2017 survey, providing new and valuable insights into their unstructured data storage requirements, and their interest in adopting object storage.

The survey validated the ongoing explosion of unstructured data, with 63 percent of enterprises and service providers reporting that their storage capacities are at 50 petabytes (PB) or more, of which, more than half is unstructured data. Most service provider respondents reported growth rates in the 60 to 80 percent range, while enterprise customers hovered more toward 40 to 50 percent annual growth.

Next-generation applications that are driving the adoption of new unstructured data storage technologies, like object storage, include analytics and Internet of Things (IoT), as well as traditional applications, such as web and email that are outgrowing their traditional infrastructures. Increased use of rich media, instead of text data, including audio, video and non-text research and engineering data, are also primary drivers for this data growth.

Western Digital today introduced a new portfolio of advanced iNAND embedded flash drives (EFDs) to empower smartphone users to unlock the full potential of today's data-driven applications and experiences. Leveraging Western Digital's 64-layer 3D NAND technology and advanced UFS and e.MMC interface technologies, the intelligent, new iNAND 8521 and iNAND 7550 EFDs deliver outstanding data performance and high storage capacity.

When designed into smartphones and thin, lightweight computing devices, they accelerate the possibilities of a wide range of demanding data-centric applications, including augmented reality (AR), high resolution video capture and rich social media experiences, as well as emerging artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) experiences at the "edge." The volume, velocity, variety and value of data continues to exponentially grow and evolve across Big Data, Fast Data and personal data. Many consumers around the world will experience this confluence of data on their smartphone.

Western Digital Corp. announced today at the 7th RISC-V Workshop that the company intends to lead the industry transition toward open, purpose-built compute architectures to meet the increasingly diverse application needs of a data-centric world. In his keynote address, Western Digital's Chief Technology Officer Martin Fink expressed the company's commitment to help lead the advancement of data-centric compute environments through the work of the RISC-V Foundation. RISC-V is an open and scalable compute architecture that will enable the diversity of Big Data and Fast Data applications and workloads proliferating in core cloud data centers and in remote and mobile systems at the edge. Western Digital's leadership role in the RISC-V initiative is significant in that it aims to accelerate the advancement of the technology and the surrounding ecosystem by transitioning its own consumption of processors - over one billion cores per year - to RISC-V.

Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ: WDC) ("Western Digital" or the "company") today announced that it has successfully priced $2.963 billion of new U.S. dollar-denominated term B-3 loans at an interest rate of LIBOR + 2.00%, which priced 75 basis points lower than its previous term B-2 loans issued in March 2017.

This new financing marks the company's third successful repricing of U.S. dollar-denominated term B loans since issuing its original term B loans in connection with its acquisition of SanDisk Corporation in May 2016. In connection with this transaction, Western Digital settled the previous U.S. dollar-denominated term B-2 loans with the proceeds of this new loan. The new financing is expected to generate annual cash interest savings of approximately $22 million beginning on Nov. 8, 2017, resulting from the 75 basis point reduction in interest spread.

The new term loans have the same remaining tenor as the previous U.S. dollar-denominated term B loans and mature on April 29, 2023.

As computing systems advance and performance is increased, there is also increased need for sufficient storage space to store the results of data processing. Emerging trends and developments in storage technology have seen the promise of new, magnetic-based technologies such as Western Digital's own MAMR technology, which is expected to bring up to 40 TB HDDs in the near future. Until those days are with us, however, improvements on current platter-based technologies are consistent and dependable, with increasing storage space capacities and densities having been delivered by companies in the last few years.

Western Digital has now begun shipping up to 14 TB HDDs, on their UltraStar HS14 family of Enterprise drives, which bring storage areal density up to a staggering 1034 Gb/in². This level of areal storage density was achieved with recourse to SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) technology, though, which means performance in rewriting already written-to sectors will be somewhat decreased when compared to other HDDs that don't employ this particular technology. These helium-filled HDDs have a 7200 RPM spindle speed and a 512 MB cache to aid offsetting this performance penalty, though. The UltraStar HS14 HDDs also offer numerous technologies to increase reliability and durability of the drive, which, with its Enterprise classification, promise to deliver 2.5 million hours MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) accompanied by a five-year warranty. Available interfaces are SATA 6 Gb/s and SAS 12 Gb/s, with the drives being able to sustain transfer rates in the order of 233 MB/s.

Hot on the heels of Western Digital's announcement of an MAMR breakthrough enabling 40 TB hard drives in the near future, rival Seagate announced a magnetic storage technology breakthrough of its own, dubbed HAMR (heat-assisted magnetic recording). This technology will enable the development of hard drives with over 20 terabytes (TB) unformatted capacity by the end of 2018, which is a faster ramp-up than WD's 2019 timeline for the first MAMR-based drives. The first Seagate HAMR-based HDDs will ship with capacities of 20 TB, with the company promising 40 TB drives by 2023, well ahead of the 2025 timeline for 40 TB drives promised by WD.

Seagate HAMR is a fundamentally different technology than Western Digital MAMR. While MAMR relies on a spin-torque oscillator to generate a microwave field that burns finer magnetized bits on the disk, thereby increasing areal densities to 40 Tb per square inch, Seagate HAMR uses an extremely fine laser to heat up the RW head, creating finer magnetized bits. The physical layer of each bit is heated and cooled within nanoseconds, and hence a HAMR RW head draws relatively lower amounts of power - up to 8W for a random-write operation (the most power-consuming operation for a drive). Seagate promises RW endurance of 2 PB.

Toshiba Corporation today held an extraordinary shareholders' meeting where Toshiba's shareholders approved the Share Purchase Agreement (SPA) previously entered into with K.K. Pangea (Pangea), a special purpose acquisition company formed by the consortium led by Bain Capital Private Equity, LP (including affiliates of Bain), for the sale of all shares of Toshiba's wholly-owned subsidiary Toshiba Memory Corporation (TMC).

SanDisk LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Digital Corporation, and certain of its subsidiaries have filed for arbitration before the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) International Court of Arbitration regarding the sale. Despite SanDisk and Western Digital's opposition, Toshiba remains fully determined to resolving the issue through the arbitration process, and looks forward to receiving the arbitrators' decision.

Since signing of the SPA on September 28, 2017, Toshiba and Pangea have been jointly working towards the closing of the transaction by the end of March 2018. Today's approval of the SPA by Toshiba's shareholders is an important step towards closing.

At its "Innovating to Fuel the Next Decade of Big Data" event today, Western Digital Corp. announced a breakthrough innovation for delivering ultra-high capacity hard disk drives (HDDs) to meet the future demands of Big Data with proven data center-level reliability. The event, held at the company's headquarters in Silicon Valley, included a demonstration of the world's first microwave-assisted magnetic recording (MAMR) HDD and presentations from company executives and the inventor of MAMR technology, Professor Jimmy Zhu from Carnegie Mellon University. The company also showcased advancements in micro actuation and Damascene recording head technology. Western Digital expects to begin shipping ultra-high capacity MAMR HDDs in 2019 for use in data centers that support Big Data applications across a full range of industries.

"As the volume, velocity, variety, value and longevity of both Big Data and Fast Data grow, a new generation of storage technologies are needed to not only support ever-expanding capacities, but ultimately help our customers analyze and garner insights into our increasingly connected universe of data," said Mike Cordano, president and chief operating officer at Western Digital. "Our ground-breaking advancement in MAMR technology will enable Western Digital to address the future of high capacity storage by redefining the density potential of HDDs and introduce a new class of highly reliable, 'ultra-high capacity' drives. We have a proven track record for identifying, investing in and delivering advanced technologies that create new product categories and enable the world to realize the possibilities of data. Five years ago we introduced our HelioSeal, helium-filled drive technology. Since then, we have shipped more than 20 million helium drives. That type of leadership and innovation continues today and we aim to leverage it well into the future."

Western Digital Corp., a global data storage technology and solutions leader, today announced that it is providing cloud and hyperscale data centers the capacity required by big data applications with the world's first 14TB enterprise-class hard drive featuring host-managed shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology. Western Digital's HGST-branded Ultrastar Hs14 delivers 40 percent more capacity and more than twice the sequential write performance of its SMR predecessor, enabling more economical and efficient capture of the growing volume and variety of data.

The future is built on the insights and predictive power of big data. As data grows exponentially, storing it all in an affordable and accessible manner is an ongoing challenge for enterprise and cloud service data center operators. With a focus on total cost of ownership (TCO), the factors of capacity per rack, power consumption, cooling, maintenance, and acquisition cost are all paramount. To combat the big data challenge, Ultrastar Hs14 drives deliver unprecedented capacity leadership and online watt/TB power efficiency for extremely low TCO by harnessing two core complimentary technologies - fourth generation HelioSeal technology, and second generation host-managed SMR - along with enterprise-class reliability.

Toshiba today announced that it has signed an agreement with a consortium led by Bain Capital to sell its memory business for JPY 2 trillion (approximately USD $18 billion). The consortium includes Korean memory giant SK Hynix, which contributed JPY 395 billion (nearly 20 percent) of the consortium's investment toward acquisition of Toshiba Memory Corp. Apple and Dell are the other members of the consortium.

Toshiba Corporation (erstwhile parent of Toshiba Memory Corp.) continues to hold a 40.2 percent stake, which along with another Japanese company, Hoya Corporation, holding a 9.9 percent stake, ensure that Japanese firms hold 50.1 percent of the business, keeping Japanese regulators happy. The Bain Capital-led consortium will hold a 49.9 percent stake, ensuring that Toshiba Memory Corp. stays afloat, and away from rival Western Digital, which has dragged Toshiba to a multitude of international courts and arbitrators. Apart from SK Hynix, the Bain Capital-led consortium includes Apple and Dell, who feared they would lose DRAM and NAND flash price bargaining power if Toshiba Memory fell in the hands of Western Digital, which owns SanDisk.

Western Digital Corporation's subsidiary SanDisk LLC (SanDisk) and certain of its subsidiaries, through their attorneys, have notified Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO:6502)(Toshiba) and Toshiba Memory Corporation (TMC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Toshiba, that they have initiated arbitration regarding TMC's planned investments for additional BiCS capacity at TMC's Yokkaichi Operations, including at its Fab 6 building. Although Toshiba has not yet received a formal copy of the arbitration request, and is therefore not in a position to comment regarding its substance, Toshiba is disappointed by Western Digital's initiation of additional arbitration at this important time for the parties' collaboration.

As previously announced, production at Fab 6 will be entirely devoted to BiCS FLASH, Toshiba's premiere 3D Flash memory product. Phase-1 of the fab is scheduled for completion in summer 2018, and will be a unilateral investment by Toshiba following SanDisk's unwillingness to agree to reasonable commercial terms.

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

On Aug. 3, 2017, Toshiba announced that it would unilaterally invest in manufacturing equipment for the Fab 6 clean room at the JV operations in Yokkaichi, Japan. The arbitration demand seeks, among other things, a permanent injunction preventing Toshiba from making unilateral investments in manufacturing equipment for Fab 6 without first giving SanDisk the opportunity to make a comparable investment in expansions and conversions of JV capacity for BiCS 3D NAND flash memory.

Western Digital commented: It is unfortunate that SanDisk is forced to initiate binding arbitration to remedy Toshiba's retaliatory breach of the JV agreement entered into by both SanDisk and Toshiba.

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."

Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO:6502) (Toshiba) has entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Bain Capital Private Equity LP (Bain), the lead member of a consortium currently bidding to acquire Toshiba Memory Corporation (TMC), memorializing the parties' intent to negotiate a mutually satisfactory definitive agreement for the sale of TMC by the end of this month. The decision to enter into the MOU was made by Toshiba's Board of Directors at its meeting today.

As Toshiba stated in its August 31 announcement, "Update on the Sale of Toshiba Memory Corporation," Toshiba has been in continuing negotiations with three consortia of potential purchasers of TMC: a consortium that includes the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, Bain and Development Bank of Japan; a consortium that includes Western Digital; and a consortium that includes Hon Hai. In the course of these negotiations Bain has come forward with a new proposal. Toshiba's Board of Directors has determined to continue negotiations with the Bain-led consortium on the basis of this new proposal, and the company will work to expedite the conclusion of a stock purchase agreement by the end of September. Toshiba hereby announces that it has accordingly entered into a non-binding MOU with Bain. The signing of this MOU does not eliminate the possibility of negotiations with other consortia.