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Stories and comments across the archive that link to wdc.com.

Stories · 17

  1. Microwave Tech Could Produce 40TB Hard Drives In the Near Future (gizmodo.com)

    Hardware · Storage · · posted by BeauHD · from the coming-soon dept. · 151 comments
    Western Digital has announced a potential game changer that promises to expand the limits of traditional HDDs to up to 40TBs using a microwave-based write head, and the company says it will be able to the public in 2019. Gizmodo reports: Western Digital's new approach, microwave-assisted magnetic recording (MAMR), can utilize the company's existing production chain to cram a lot more storage onto a 3.5-inch disk. In a technical overview, Western Digital says it has managed to overcome the biggest issue with traditional HDD drive storage -- the size of the write head. These days, an average hard drive maxes out in the 10-14TB range. But by integrating a new write head, "a spin torque oscillator," microwaves can create the energy levels necessary for copying data within a lower magnetic field than was ever previously possible. There's a more thorough white paper for those who want to dive in. According to Western Digital, MAMR has "the capability to extend areal density gains up to 4 Terabits per square inch." By the year 2025, it hopes to be packing 40TBs into the same size drive it offers today.

  2. Western Digital Unveils First-Ever 512Gb 64-Layer 3D NAND Chip (betanews.com)

    Hardware · Business · · posted by BeauHD · from the first-of-its-kind dept. · 78 comments
    BrianFagioli quotes a report from BetaNews: As great as these solid state drives are now, they are only getting better. For example, SATA-based SSDs were once viewed as miraculous, but they are now looked at as slow -- PCIe-based NVMe drives are all the rage. To highlight the steady evolution of flash storage, Western Digital today unveiled the first-ever 512 gigabit 64-layer 3D NAND chip. "The launch of the industry's first 512Gb 64-layer 3D NAND chip is another important stride forward in the advancement of our 3D NAND technology, doubling the density from when we introduced the world's first 64-layer architecture in July 2016. This is a great addition to our rapidly broadening 3D NAND technology portfolio. It positions us well to continue addressing the increasing demand for storage due to rapid data growth across a wide range of customer retail, mobile and data center applications," says Dr. Siva Sivaram, executive vice president, memory technology, Western Digital. Western Digital further explains that it did not develop this new technology on its own. The company shares, "The 512Gb 64-layer chip was developed jointly with the company's technology and manufacturing partner Toshiba. Western Digital first introduced initial capacities of the world's first 64-layer 3D NAND technology in July 2016 and the world's first 48-layer 3D NAND technology in 2015; product shipments with both technologies continue to retail and OEM customers."

  3. Western Digital To Buy SanDisk (reuters.com)

    Hardware · Storage · · posted by Soulskill · from the go-big-or-go-home dept. · 99 comments
    An anonymous reader writes: Reuters reports that Western Digital will buy SanDisk in a deal worth roughly $19 billion. In a press release, WD said, "The combination is the next step in the transformation of Western Digital into a storage solutions company with global scale, extensive product and technology assets, and deep expertise in non-volatile memory (NVM)." SanDisk has been in business since 1988, and primarily "manufactures flash memory chips and other digital storage for personal computers, data centers and consumer electronics, including smartphones and tablets." They have over 8,000 employees, compared to WD's ~76,000. This follows another major transaction in the storage market, when Dell bought EMC last week.

  4. Ask Slashdot: Building a Home Media Center/Small Server In a Crawlspace?

    Ask · Media · · posted by timothy · from the make-sure-you-can-retrieve-it-later dept. · 253 comments
    An anonymous reader writes "I've decided it's time for me to build a separate machine specifically for use as a Media Center/Small Home Server. My wife and I haven't had cable TV in years, instead relying entirely on Netflix, other streaming sites, and hard copies we've bought over the years. Having just finished ripping our entire media collection (CDs, DVDs, and even our vinyls and VHS with the help of a capture card and some sweet digital voodoo) to a couple HDDs, I'm feeling froggy. Up until now we've been using WDTV Live, and it's been pretty snazzy, but I want to upgrade to a dedicated media machine instead of piggybacking off of my office computer. It'll be a Windows based machine utilizing Plex, and it's going in the crawlspace of the house. The crawlspace in question is unfinished, but I do have a dry concrete slab down there where I can put/mount/assemble something. Cooling won't be an issue obviously, and I am keeping a close eye on hardware specs with regards to moisture. It is still a crawlspace though. What would be a good setup to to house the hardware? Priorities being to safeguard against moisture, vermin, and dirt. Modified PC Tower? Rack? Build an enclosure? Something I haven't considered?

    Please assume I'm stubborn and absolutely dead-set on putting it in the crawlspace to avoid the discussion devolving into the 'best' place to put a media machine."     Do you have a question to Ask Slashdot? Fire away, with details, using our submissions form.

  5. Western Digital Service Restricts Use of Network Drives

    Tech · Networking · · posted by Zonk · from the drm-means-don't-read-disk dept. · 315 comments
    sehlat writes "Via BoingBoing comes the news that Western Digital's My Book(TM) World Edition(TM) II, sold with promises of internet-accessible drive space, is now restricting the types of files the drive will serve up. 'Western Digital is disabling sharing of any avi, divx, mp3, mpeg, and many other files on its network connected devices; due to unverifiable media license authentication. Just wondering -- who needs a 1 Terabyte network-connected hard drive that is prohibited from serving most media files? Perhaps somebody with 220 million pages of .txt files they need to share?'" Update: 12/07 03:28 GMT by Z : To clarify, it actually seems as though this is a bad summary. The MioNET service that WD packages with the networked drives is responsible for the rights of users via the network. There are a few (obvious) ways to get around that.

  6. Calculating the Mean Time Between Failures?

    Ask · Hardware · · posted by Cliff · from the surely-they-don't-test-for-500k-hours dept. · 100 comments
    Blue Booger asks: "I was looking over some fibrechannel hard drives and noticed that the Mean Time Between Failures was rated at 1.2 million hours. I thought that was pretty high, and figured it up to be close to 137 YEARS!! I went to check some regular IDE drives just for comparison, and they were rated at 500,000 hours (57 years). Now, as I understand it, this is supposed to be the average time that you can expect the drive to last before failures. I rarely have an IDE drive last more than 4 years, and my record is 10 years, so what is the deal? BTW, that is 57 years running 24 hours a day...the MTBF is rated as power on time. Here you can find Western Digital's glossary that defines the term MTBF (pdf). Here you can find a spec sheet on one of their 20GB IDE drives. I checked, and Seagate also lists similar MTBFs. How the heck are they coming up with these numbers?"

  7. Calculating the Mean Time Between Failures?

    Ask · Hardware · · posted by Cliff · from the surely-they-don't-test-for-500k-hours dept. · 100 comments
    Blue Booger asks: "I was looking over some fibrechannel hard drives and noticed that the Mean Time Between Failures was rated at 1.2 million hours. I thought that was pretty high, and figured it up to be close to 137 YEARS!! I went to check some regular IDE drives just for comparison, and they were rated at 500,000 hours (57 years). Now, as I understand it, this is supposed to be the average time that you can expect the drive to last before failures. I rarely have an IDE drive last more than 4 years, and my record is 10 years, so what is the deal? BTW, that is 57 years running 24 hours a day...the MTBF is rated as power on time. Here you can find Western Digital's glossary that defines the term MTBF (pdf). Here you can find a spec sheet on one of their 20GB IDE drives. I checked, and Seagate also lists similar MTBFs. How the heck are they coming up with these numbers?"

  8. Firewire Enclosures and Support for 120+GB Drives?

    Ask · Hardware · · posted by Cliff · from the dealing-with-mismatching-chipset-implementations dept. · 17 comments
    smackthud asks: "I'm looking for an external firewire enclosure that works with a new 200GB Western Digital HD w/8mb cache. I tried putting the drive into my ADS pyro enclosure, however, the drive is seen by my G4 iMac as a 128GB drive, which is obviously incorrect. This is not a limitation of MacOSX 10.2 or the iMac, since the HFS+ filesystem supports 2TB+ file systems, and Firewire itself is device size agnostic. The enclosure simply isn't reporting the size of the drive properly. Some research has revealed that most enclosures that use the Oxford 911 bridge chipset do not support ATA100 drives larger than 120GB, while at least one supports up to160GB, but no more. My suspicion is that this is a limitation of the bridge controller's implementation of the ATA100 interface. I've heard that ATA100 had the optional ability to support 48bit address space rather than 32, which would mean that only those vendors who support the optional space would be able to address drives larger than 137GB. This may play a factor in Firewire chipsets which must bridge IDE to IEE1394. Existing products from both WD and Lacie prove that using this drive should be possible, and that any problems with large ATA100 drives have been solved by some vendors. Any helpful information or recommendations would be appreciated."

  9. Firewire Enclosures and Support for 120+GB Drives?

    Ask · Hardware · · posted by Cliff · from the dealing-with-mismatching-chipset-implementations dept. · 17 comments
    smackthud asks: "I'm looking for an external firewire enclosure that works with a new 200GB Western Digital HD w/8mb cache. I tried putting the drive into my ADS pyro enclosure, however, the drive is seen by my G4 iMac as a 128GB drive, which is obviously incorrect. This is not a limitation of MacOSX 10.2 or the iMac, since the HFS+ filesystem supports 2TB+ file systems, and Firewire itself is device size agnostic. The enclosure simply isn't reporting the size of the drive properly. Some research has revealed that most enclosures that use the Oxford 911 bridge chipset do not support ATA100 drives larger than 120GB, while at least one supports up to160GB, but no more. My suspicion is that this is a limitation of the bridge controller's implementation of the ATA100 interface. I've heard that ATA100 had the optional ability to support 48bit address space rather than 32, which would mean that only those vendors who support the optional space would be able to address drives larger than 137GB. This may play a factor in Firewire chipsets which must bridge IDE to IEE1394. Existing products from both WD and Lacie prove that using this drive should be possible, and that any problems with large ATA100 drives have been solved by some vendors. Any helpful information or recommendations would be appreciated."

  10. Slashback: Courseware, Warranties, Subscraption

    Slashback · · posted by ryuzaki0 · from the what-to-do-in-williamsburg dept. · 311 comments
    Slashback brings you word on open courseware, The Big Switch as seen by Tim O'Reilly, another update on the man-made "moon," more on the in-progress clampdown on Chinese Internet searchers, and a disheartening note about hard drive warranties. Get 'em before they disappear completely ;) Read on for the details.

    But will they distribute diploma blanks as PDF files? perlmunger writes "Linux Journal highlighted this in the 'up front' section of the June 2001 issue (I knew I keep these old issues around for a reason). Apparently, MIT will (finally) be opening their Open Course Ware initiative on September 30th to the public. Looks like a great start from many departments."

    Answer: it's a strong possibility. skinfitz writes "Following on from Google returning to China, New Scientist is reporting in this article that Chinese surfers searching Google are finding their Internet connection dropped for five minutes if they enter "politically sensitive" keywords, such as the Chinese president's name! Will this new technology find uses elsewhere? Is this the future of the web?"

    My human transporter is still a station wagon. An anonymous reader writes with the text which by now many people have seen regarding the status of the world's most famous unavailable scooter; apparently it's not necessarily as far from available as an automated message from Amazon implied.

    "Greetings from Amazon.com.

    You recently received an e-mail from us regarding the Segway Human Transporter (also known as "Ginger" or "IT"). This e-mail was sent accidentally by an automated system and the information in it is incorrect.

    In fact, there is no new information on Segway's availability. Consumer versions of Segway Human Transporters are currently being piloted in various communities throughout the U.S. The Segway HT is expected to be released to the general consumer market in 2003.

    We apologize for the confusion. We will keep your e-mail address on our list of customers who wish to be notified about this item.

    Sincerely,
    Amazon.com Customer Service

    Strong Opinions softsign writes "Apparently, Tim O'Reilly's recent article addressing the topic of Switchers was so popular and generated so much response that he felt compelled to respond to reader comments in his MacDevCenter column this week. It reads almost like the Apple Switch website, but there are some really insightful emails peppered with Tim's comments. Worth a read."

    The moon's been asking for this for years. cscx writes "The mysterious space junk, or apparent "other moon" reported a few weeks ago, now is more likely to be an old Saturn V (from the Apollo program) rocket booster. Bad thing is, there is a 20% chance it could strike the moon sometime next year. More details at MSNBC."

    We'll let you you borrow it for a while, sign here. An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has scrapped plans for subscription-based licensing of consumer products following the end of a 12-month trial in several countries including New Zealand. The Story says people were getting confused as to why they had to pay after the 12 months had gone by."

    I find your lack of confidence disturbing. Longinus writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Western Digital is going to follow Maxtor's recent decision to cut their warranty of future drives from three years to one, with an extended warranty being offered at an additional price. The article goes on to mention that Seagate is rumored to also be considering such a cut, but nothing official has been confirmed. One can only wonder if this increase in price is to due to corporate cost saving measures or the fact that hard drives are becoming less stable magnetically as they increase in storage space."

  11. Slashback: Courseware, Warranties, Subscraption

    Slashback · · posted by ryuzaki0 · from the what-to-do-in-williamsburg dept. · 311 comments
    Slashback brings you word on open courseware, The Big Switch as seen by Tim O'Reilly, another update on the man-made "moon," more on the in-progress clampdown on Chinese Internet searchers, and a disheartening note about hard drive warranties. Get 'em before they disappear completely ;) Read on for the details.

    But will they distribute diploma blanks as PDF files? perlmunger writes "Linux Journal highlighted this in the 'up front' section of the June 2001 issue (I knew I keep these old issues around for a reason). Apparently, MIT will (finally) be opening their Open Course Ware initiative on September 30th to the public. Looks like a great start from many departments."

    Answer: it's a strong possibility. skinfitz writes "Following on from Google returning to China, New Scientist is reporting in this article that Chinese surfers searching Google are finding their Internet connection dropped for five minutes if they enter "politically sensitive" keywords, such as the Chinese president's name! Will this new technology find uses elsewhere? Is this the future of the web?"

    My human transporter is still a station wagon. An anonymous reader writes with the text which by now many people have seen regarding the status of the world's most famous unavailable scooter; apparently it's not necessarily as far from available as an automated message from Amazon implied.

    "Greetings from Amazon.com.

    You recently received an e-mail from us regarding the Segway Human Transporter (also known as "Ginger" or "IT"). This e-mail was sent accidentally by an automated system and the information in it is incorrect.

    In fact, there is no new information on Segway's availability. Consumer versions of Segway Human Transporters are currently being piloted in various communities throughout the U.S. The Segway HT is expected to be released to the general consumer market in 2003.

    We apologize for the confusion. We will keep your e-mail address on our list of customers who wish to be notified about this item.

    Sincerely,
    Amazon.com Customer Service

    Strong Opinions softsign writes "Apparently, Tim O'Reilly's recent article addressing the topic of Switchers was so popular and generated so much response that he felt compelled to respond to reader comments in his MacDevCenter column this week. It reads almost like the Apple Switch website, but there are some really insightful emails peppered with Tim's comments. Worth a read."

    The moon's been asking for this for years. cscx writes "The mysterious space junk, or apparent "other moon" reported a few weeks ago, now is more likely to be an old Saturn V (from the Apollo program) rocket booster. Bad thing is, there is a 20% chance it could strike the moon sometime next year. More details at MSNBC."

    We'll let you you borrow it for a while, sign here. An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has scrapped plans for subscription-based licensing of consumer products following the end of a 12-month trial in several countries including New Zealand. The Story says people were getting confused as to why they had to pay after the 12 months had gone by."

    I find your lack of confidence disturbing. Longinus writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Western Digital is going to follow Maxtor's recent decision to cut their warranty of future drives from three years to one, with an extended warranty being offered at an additional price. The article goes on to mention that Seagate is rumored to also be considering such a cut, but nothing official has been confirmed. One can only wonder if this increase in price is to due to corporate cost saving measures or the fact that hard drives are becoming less stable magnetically as they increase in storage space."

  12. Western Digital Announces 200 Gig Drives

    Tech · Technology · · posted by CmdrTaco · from the pr0n-glorious-pr0n dept. · 570 comments
    twilightzero writes "Video capture fanatics and pr0n moguls, rejoice! Today marks the official release of the Western Digital 200 GB hard drive! Never again run out of space for your X-10 video stream of the neighbor's house! See the graphic, specs, and press release. This also marks the release of WD drives using fluid dynamic bearings rather than the old BB type." The glorious march of technology continues forward, and digital video fans rejoice. Update: 07/26 03:34 GMT by M : Headline corrected. Taco's at a conference, cut him a little slack.

  13. Western Digital Announces 200 Gig Drives

    Tech · Technology · · posted by CmdrTaco · from the pr0n-glorious-pr0n dept. · 570 comments
    twilightzero writes "Video capture fanatics and pr0n moguls, rejoice! Today marks the official release of the Western Digital 200 GB hard drive! Never again run out of space for your X-10 video stream of the neighbor's house! See the graphic, specs, and press release. This also marks the release of WD drives using fluid dynamic bearings rather than the old BB type." The glorious march of technology continues forward, and digital video fans rejoice. Update: 07/26 03:34 GMT by M : Headline corrected. Taco's at a conference, cut him a little slack.

  14. Western Digital Announces 200 Gig Drives

    Tech · Technology · · posted by CmdrTaco · from the pr0n-glorious-pr0n dept. · 570 comments
    twilightzero writes "Video capture fanatics and pr0n moguls, rejoice! Today marks the official release of the Western Digital 200 GB hard drive! Never again run out of space for your X-10 video stream of the neighbor's house! See the graphic, specs, and press release. This also marks the release of WD drives using fluid dynamic bearings rather than the old BB type." The glorious march of technology continues forward, and digital video fans rejoice. Update: 07/26 03:34 GMT by M : Headline corrected. Taco's at a conference, cut him a little slack.

  15. Western Digital Pulling Out Of SCSI HD Business

    Hardware · Hardware · · posted by emmett · from the we'll-always-have-scsi dept. · 454 comments
    leiz writes "This article on Yahoo says Western Digital is pulling out of the enterprise hard drive business. This means they will no longer produce SCSI hard drives and Western Digital will be instead concentrating on the IDE and software business. What does this mean for the SCSI market? With 7200 rpm UltraATA/66 hard drives catching up in performance to SCSI HD, products such as the Fastrak RAID 0, 1, 0+1 card, and the cheap cost affectiveness of IDE/ATA, is SCSI no longer necessary for desktops / workstations / small servers?"

  16. MP3 Hardware Mailing List

    News · News · · posted by CmdrTaco · from the seems-like-a-good-idea dept. · 0 comments
    Aaron Newsome is starting a mailing list to discuss issues relating to building machines specifically to play MP3s. Send a subject: subscribe to mp3stereo-request@itchy.wdc.com. How long before someone can market an inexpensive stereo component that will do it? Not soon enough for me...

  17. MP3 Hardware Mailing List

    News · News · · posted by CmdrTaco · from the seems-like-a-good-idea dept. · 0 comments
    Aaron Newsome is starting a mailing list to discuss issues relating to building machines specifically to play MP3s. Send a subject: subscribe to mp3stereo-request@itchy.wdc.com. How long before someone can market an inexpensive stereo component that will do it? Not soon enough for me...