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

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."

Comments

Re:Hopefully better than their hard drives.

[bobbied]

I don't care what vendor you use...

If you care about your data you either RAID (and monitor) or keep good backups that you routinely test. (preferably both)

My Personal file server is software RAID-5 with a hot spare and a replacement drive on the shelf. PLUS I keep a nightly mirrored backup online and rotate the spindles offsite to the In-laws basement every time we visit. (I know I'm cheap, but 4 Gig is kind of expensive to back up to the cloud and I have security to consider.) I lost a small portion of the photos once and thought my wife was going to kill me, NEVER again unless the zombie apocalypse happens.

WD drives do seem to be on the lower end of reliability, but I really don't care that much myself. I buy what's cheap and I'll toss it when it breaks...