How does Western Digital plan to survive?

[ZippyDan]

Am I blind or do I not see any pure SSD drives from Western Digital? The best I see are hybrid drives, but as of now WD seems to have no SSD market share.

When I'm looking to buy the cheapest GBs, I still buy WD (most notably their Black lines and Red NAS lines), but at work we have already switched dozens of desktops to SSDs (usually Crucial, sometimes Samsung). Price/GB keeps falling on SSDs, and more importantly aren't we going to hit a physical limit for the density of traditional magnetic platters very soon?

How is WD going to still be in business in 5 years?

I wonder about Seagate too, but I haven't bought anything substantial from them since their glory days in the sub-500GB years (I had a 1TB Seagate that failed on me 4 times in warranty, but their 120GB SE drives with 5-year warranties were awesome). Additionally, this article http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatsp...where-do-seagate-and-western-digital-stand-2/ seems to indicate that they are much better positioned to transition to the SSD market.

 

[larryccf]

you may have answered your own question with the "SSD pricing dropping like it has". It may well be WD has simply been waiting to see how the market matured - and lo & behold, besides sata SSD pricing falling like lead balloons, M.2 SSDs are taking off like roman candles

suspect there'll be a spinner market for quite awhile yet, and still time for WD to pick a path into the flash drive market

 

[ShintaiDK]

5 years is no problem. But if you look 10-15 years out I dont think WD exist.

The HD makers all gambled too much on HDs while being arrogant to SSDs. Same reason why it took Intel to really kickstart the SSD revolution.

 

[Data-Medics]

Perhaps WD is just waiting to see who's going to come out the leader in SSD tech, and then buy them. Seagate has already purchased a number of flash companies such as Sandforce (obviously at the expense of building quality HDD).

Or maybe WD is just waiting to sell their name to Samsung when spinners go by the wayside. However the new 10Tb HGST (owned by WD) enterprise drives gives some hope that they aren't done yet. I know I'll be out of a job when everything is SSD.

 

[soccerballtux]

Of all manufacturers WD will be fine. I would trust their drives with my life. They don't release something until they've got it 100% reliable. It's why they're always behind on the spinning-platter-space-wars and always charging a premium.

 

[Hellhammer]

Western Digital has actually made rather significant moves in the past few years. The company now owns sTec, Virident and Skyera, all which were rather notable companies in the SSD industry especially when it comes to IP and technology. WD has a broad lineup of enterprise SSDs under its HGST arm, which focuses on enterprise.

 

[WilliamM2]

5 years is no problem. But if you look 10-15 years out I dont think WD exist.

In 10-15 years, I'm not sure PC's will even exist.

 

[Ketchup]

I am sure it's fun to jump in the growing phase and learn and improve as you go, but I think Hellhammer pointed out their approach - just buy the technology when the time it right.

Right now almost all the big names are memory manufacturers. This is their turf. I think as we begin to see a decent amount of computers coming with SSDs from the PC manufacturers, we will see hard drive manufactures make the change.

 

[freeskier93]

There's always going to be a market for high density storage, tape is still used for archival purposes because density is still increasing and it's super cheap. Storage density will continue to increase as well for hard drives making them still relevant for many years to come. Ultimately though yes, WD will have to move to SSD to survive because hard drives will eventually become niche like tape.

Seagate is already dabbling in SSD. I actually have a couple Seagate 600 SSDs that I use in my Macbook Pro and desktop. At the time they were very competitive in price/performance and actually used custom designed controllers. I think when Seagate does finally break into the mainstream SSD market they will be a brute force.

 

[MongGrel]

As has been mentioned, I doubt WD is going anywhere in the near future, as far as failing by a long shot.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I bought a refurb-ed laptop through a friend, a Centrino-duo introduced in 2007. It had been re-fitted with a WD "Blue" 500GB HDD. When I replaced it with an SSD, I was surprised at that little Blue Devil.

It weighs as much as an envelope filled with maybe three pages. A little 2.5" HDD. I used it for the auxiliary data drive in the (desktop) machine I built for my brother in January. The boot drive is a 250GB 840 EVO.

I still see most new laptops sold with an "HDD." Perhaps that keeps the price down -- for now. And -- for now . . . . freeskier93 has a point.

On the bright side, the computer storage market is very competitive. There are no barriers to entry. They can't just spin propaganda to stay in business.

Consider our dependence on oil, and the oil companies' dependence on our dependence. Or the simple fact that they're vertically integrated, as a handful of companies less than the number needed for a stable cartel (read monopoly). Well, let me stop there, or we'll move to "Politics and News."

Western Digital will transform itself -- if they need to. They won't need to produce ads like "America is the new superpower of Natural Gas" or "BP puts America first!"

 

[bradley]

Western Digital has actually made rather significant moves in the past few years. The company now owns sTec, Virident and Skyera, all which were rather notable companies in the SSD industry especially when it comes to IP and technology. WD has a broad lineup of enterprise SSDs under its HGST arm, which focuses on enterprise.

Nice to have someone who knows the facts. 🙂

Also phase change memory is set to replace NAND, which is nothing more than glorified flash. Western Digital’s HGST division also has PCM in the works. Although the Micron/Intel collaboration looks like the one to beat on paper. We about to enter a new tech wave and some exciting data times over the next few years.

Although hard drives aren't going anywhere for quite some time. Don't underestimate their usage for enterprise data.

 

[yinan]

Nice to have someone who knows the facts. 🙂

Also phase change memory is set to replace NAND, which is nothing more than glorified flash. Western Digital’s HGST division also has PCM in the works. Although the Micron/Intel collaboration looks like the one to beat on paper. We about to enter a new tech wave and some exciting data times over the next few years.

Although hard drives aren't going anywhere for quite some time. Don't underestimate their usage for enterprise data.

Why would I want to use spinning disks that generate a ton of heat, use a ton of power, are orders of magnitude slower when I can use SSD? In the enterprise market everything is going all flash because it is so much more reliable and generates almost no heat and you can pack a ton of drives in a single shelf.

 

[ronbo613]

Why would I want to use spinning disks that generate a ton of heat, use a ton of power, are orders of magnitude slower when I can use SSD?

Cost and capacity

 

[yinan]

Cost and capacity

Cost is going down and capacity is going up. Along with substantially increased feature sets. Capacity really isn't that much greater. Yes SSDs are smaller per drive, but you can cram 100x as many of them in the same physical space, power, and cooling budget.

 

[corkyg]

Yinan's response is good from his/er perspective, i.e., the single user. Business users with dozens or hundreds of machines have a different perspective. This article provides a good comparison chart near the end.

http://www.storagereview.com/ssd_vs_hdd

 

[yinan]

Yinan's response is good from his/er perspective, i.e., the single user. Business users with dozens or hundreds of machines have a different perspective. This article provides a good comparison chart near the end.

http://www.storagereview.com/ssd_vs_hdd

I am not doing this from a single user perspective, far from it. I work in an environment that has a large amount of storage, triple digit PB, and we cannot wait to get rid of all the slow, and hot spinning disks, and replace it all with SSD or the equivalent.

 

[BFG10K]

Cost is going down and capacity is going up.

Same thing for HDDs. You can purchase a 3TB HDD for ~$80. How many thousands does a 3TB SSD cost?

Yes SSDs are smaller per drive, but you can cram 100x as many of them in the same physical space, power, and cooling budget.

No you can't. SSDs don't use that much less power under load, and are adversely affected at high temperatures in the real world: http://www.zdnet.com/article/facebooks-ssd-experience/

Interestingly enough, Helium HDDs can be completely immersed in liquid for better cooling, which is something that could be useful for data centers. You can't do that with SSDs.

I work in an environment that has a large amount of storage, triple digit PB, and we cannot wait to get rid of all the slow, and hot spinning disks, and replace it all with SSD or the equivalent

You might want to conduct some basic research before dropping down all that cash.

 

[yinan]

Same thing for HDDs. You can purchase a 3TB HDD for ~$80. How many thousands does a 3TB SSD cost?


No you can't. SSDs don't use that much less power under load, and are adversely affected at high temperatures in the real world: http://www.zdnet.com/article/facebooks-ssd-experience/

Interestingly enough, Helium HDDs can be completely immersed in liquid for better cooling, which is something that could be useful for data centers. You can't do that with SSDs.

For 6x 500GB SSDs, about $3000. But you will beat the shit out of the HDD in performance and reliability and feature set.

You can fit a couple hundred drives in a shelf that used to hold just 15 HDDs.

I am not speaking from articles or something someone may have heard from someone I just know we are loving our migration from slow ass spinning disk to SSD.

 

[BFG10K]

For 6x 500GB SSDs, about $3000. But you will beat the shit out of the HDD in performance and reliability and feature set.

Performance yes. But then the same applies to a RAM disk. Buy 3TB RAM for $20,000 and it'll "beat the shit out of SSDs".

Reliability? Nope. SSDs haven't proven to significantly more reliable than HDDs (again, based on studies from large data centers), and in your case you're introducing 6x more failure chance per single HDD.

You can fit a couple hundred drives in a shelf that used to hold just 15 HDDs.

Good luck with those temperatures.

I am not speaking from articles or something someone may have heard from someone I just know we are loving our migration from slow ass spinning disk to SSD.

I sincerely doubt your data center is anywhere near the size or history of Facebook's. This is real data from Facebook, not opinion from an anonymous internet personality.

 

[yinan]

Performance yes. But then the same applies to a RAM disk. Buy 3TB RAM for $20,000 and it'll "beat the shit out of SSDs".

Reliability? Nope. SSDs haven't proven to significantly more reliable than HDDs (again, based on studies from large data centers), and in your case you're introducing 6x more failure chance per single HDD.


Good luck with those temperatures.


I sincerely doubt your data center is anywhere near the size or history of Facebook's. This is real data from Facebook, not opinion from an anonymous internet personality.

We have no problems with temps. Size of Facebook's not quite, but then again not many places have as much storage as we do. We buy storage by the PB. TB don't even matter anymore.

 

[ZippyDan]

There's always going to be a market for high density storage, tape is still used for archival purposes because density is still increasing and it's super cheap. Storage density will continue to increase as well for hard drives making them still relevant for many years to come. Ultimately though yes, WD will have to move to SSD to survive because hard drives will eventually become niche like tape.

The problem is that traditional spin and platter, magnetic-read/write HDs are soon going to hit a physical density limit where it is not possible to make the individual sectors smaller. This means drive size is going to stop in its tracks, where SSD drives have waaaaay more headroom to both catch up to and eventually surpass bits/inch^2.

Update: Seagate claims to have found a way around this physical limitation, but I still think things are going to get harder and harder for this old technology to keep up, while SSD is just getting better and better faster and faster.

http://www.computerworld.com/articl...seagate-promises-60tb-drives-this-decade.html

I still see most new laptops sold with an "HDD." Perhaps that keeps the price down -- for now.

That's because 95% of consumers just look for more GB/TB and overall price and have no knowledge of competing drive technologies. For a laptop to sell at the same price with HDD or SSD it would come with either a 1TB HDD or a 250GB SSD, and 95% of the time the consumers will choose the 1TB without a second thought.

 

[Ketchup]

The problem is that traditional spin and platter, magnetic-read/write HDs are soon going to hit a physical density limit where it is not possible to make the individual sectors smaller. This means drive size is going to stop in its tracks, where SSD drives have waaaaay more headroom to both catch up to and eventually surpass bits/inch^2.....

Do you have a link for that? I know a few years ago Intel was saying SSDs would hit a wall due to latency and error correction, but even that was somewhere around 16 GB.

Also, to be fair, hard drives themselves have hit a "brick wall" several times over the years, but there always seems to be technology coming along to surpass that.

 

[Oyeve]

While I have switched to SSD on all my systems at home and on my new work servers, my old servers, which are still running as I am only beginning to migrate to the new ones, all have Western Digital Red and Black Enterprise HDs and they have been running non-stop since end of 2007. Thats 8 years with only 1 failing out of around 30. Thats pretty freaking awesome. I bet the new enterprise level SSD drives I have in my new server wont last that long. WD aint going anywhere.

 

[bigboxes]

Of all manufacturers WD will be fine. I would trust their drives with my life. They don't release something until they've got it 100% reliable. It's why they're always behind on the spinning-platter-space-wars and always charging a premium.

I've had a handful of WD drives go bad. They aren't the premium product you think they are. Outside of a few models, I don't think any manufacturer is really bad. I learned a long time ago that data backup is essential. I learned it after one of my WD drives died and took with it a bunch of unrecoverable data. It was out of warranty too. I'll tell you what is my favorite model - the original 74GB Raptor. It's still going strong. I have switched to all SSD for my boot drives. The 74GB is to small (for me) to be of much use. I put it back in my new build just to see how long it will go. It's power on hours is close to 8.5 years by now.