Official: WD to acquire Sandisk.

[4ndrew]

Original link: http://www.overclock3d.net/articles/storage/western_digital_to_buy_sandisk_for_19_billion/1

Quote from WD.

“This transformational acquisition aligns with our long-term strategy to be an innovative leader in the storage industry by providing compelling, high-quality products with leading technology,” 

“The combined company will be ideally positioned to capture the growth opportunities created by the rapidly evolving storage industry,”

 

This is really interesting, I'd love to see a WD ssd! Seems like WD realised that the hard drive industry is going to be less relevant going into the future, hopefully this acquisition means that we will still be seeing WD drives for the foreseeable future.

Post your thoughts and comments below...

 

Edit: looks like it is going to cost WD around $19 Billion! Also WD hybrid drives would be really cool, would be nice to see a competitor to Seagate...

[don_svetlio]

RiP night theme

[Smooth Bunz]

Awesome! Now we can have more over priced hybrid drives!! Wooo! JK


I'm hyped for whats to come after this

[lubblig]

RiP night theme

Dark theme fixer: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/193630-complete-list-of-forum-addons-scripts-apps-etc/

Fixes badly formatted posts.

[CydiaDash]

Personally not happy with this

[Notional]

Very interesting news. Western digital has to do something as HDD's will fade out quite fast over the next years.

this should pave the way for wd SSD's.

[Altecice]

Nice to see possible WD entrance into the SSD market.

[Prysin]

Awesome! Now we can have more over priced hybrid drives!! Wooo! JK

I'm hyped for whats to come after this

actually, i pointed out for @Captain_WD that their Black² drive was a tad overpriced... dunno if it has any real correlation, but at the time it was $192 on PPP, now its down to $130-$140....

[79wjd]

Very interesting news. Western digital has to do something as HDD's will fade out quite fast over the next years.

this should pave the way for wd SSD's.

Just like tapes faded out after HDDs became mainstream. 

 

/There is and will likely always (until potentially another replacement comes out) be a use for HDDs as they're better for long term storage than an SSD (but not quite as good as tapes). Plus the fact that HDDs will likely be cheaper than SSDs for quite a while (eventually SSDs should be cheaper to manufacture....but not for a long time) will make them a more compelling choice for running most companies off of where the added latency/bandwidth of an SSD array is irrelevant. 

[Smooth Bunz]

actually, i pointed out for @Captain_WD that their Black² drive was a tad overpriced... dunno if it has any real correlation, but at the time it was $192 on PPP, now its down to $130-$140....

When they first came out they were like $299 haha but hmm $130 is still a bit much I think. I feel like a 120gb ssd and a 1tb hdd could be bought for around or less than $100 I could see a 240gb and 1tb hdd hybrid be good for around the $130 range

[SurvivorNVL]

I do not mind this.  I hope we see a Hybrid drive with a ridiculous level of cache or layers of cache.  SLC 8gb for OS, TLC 56gb for general caching, and then the platters.  If they could make that work it would be rather interesting.  SSHDs with intelligent caching systems could be useful as storage drives or utilizing an on the flight caching system on specific drives for programs that are currently in use rather than ones that are frequently used.

[79wjd]

When they first came out they were like $299 haha but hmm $130 is still a bit much I think. I feel like a 120gb ssd and a 1tb hdd could be bought for around or less than $100 I could see a 240gb and 1tb hdd hybrid be good for around the $130 range

wd black 2 is a 2.5" drive though isnt it? 

[Notional]

Just like tapes faded out after HDDs became mainstream. 

 

/There is and will likely always (until potentially another replacement comes out) be a use for HDDs as they're better for long term storage than an SSD (but not quite as good as tapes). Plus the fact that HDDs will likely be cheaper than SSDs for quite a while (eventually SSDs should be cheaper to manufacture....but not for a long time) will make them a more compelling choice for running most companies off of where the added latency/bandwidth of an SSD array is irrelevant. 

 

I think HDD's can continue to be useful on datacentres due to price, and the fact you might be able to recover date from fracked drives (although your setup should never de dependant on one drive). However I'm sure SSD's are better at archiving as they are much less fragile, but I don't have a source to back up that claim.

 

But for the average consumer, no one really NEEDS 4+ TB. We should see the first SSD drives surpass HDD capacity 2016/17, albeit with a hefty price tag. Prices will continue to plummet none the less. For most people, a much faster and power efficient SSD is much more important for their use cases.

So for your point, we might see HDD's be replaced completely by SSD's and tape in the future anyways.

[themaniac]

 

Edit: looks like it is going to cost WD around $19 Billion! Also WD hybrid drives would be really cool, would be nice to see a competitor to Seagate...

 

Western Digital(and Hitachi to a lesser extent also Hitachi is owned by WD iirc) is already the big competitor to Seagate

[Smooth Bunz]

wd black 2 is a 120gb ssd though isnt it? 

Yes but im saying you could get a 120gb ssd and a 1tb hdd for around $100 vs the hybrid for $130-$140

[kameshss]

I guess this topic is already posted on the forum before. Just don't say that this post is for confirmation that they are buying Sandisk.

 

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/470716-western-digital-in-advanced-talks-to-buy-sandisk/

 

Just keep the forum tidy and neat.

[NumLock21]

Nice to see possible WD entrance into the SSD market.

They bought another SSD maker a few years ago, but never bother with it, it's like buying something and then throwing in the closet to let it rot.

[79wjd]

I think HDD's can continue to be useful on datacentres due to price, and the fact you might be able to recover date from fracked drives (although your setup should never de dependant on one drive). However I'm sure SSD's are better at archiving as they are much less fragile, but I don't have a source to back up that claim.

 

But for the average consumer, no one really NEEDS 4+ TB. We should see the first SSD drives surpass HDD capacity 2016/17, albeit with a hefty price tag. Prices will continue to plummet none the less. For most people, a much faster and power efficient SSD is much more important for their use cases.

So for your point, we might see HDD's be replaced completely by SSD's and tape in the future anyways.

For the average user I agree, but for businesses there isn't much of a benefit to using SSDs over an HDD (depending on the server). So as long as the ultimate cost of an HDD -- including the drive, power consumption, and cooling -- is less than an SSD, and until SSDs write cycles become as high as HDDs (even though they're irrelevantly high for consumers there still not quite as high as HDDs unless that has changed recently) there will still be a place for HDDs in the enterprise environment. 

 

Yes but im saying you could get a 120gb ssd and a 1tb hdd for around $100 vs the hybrid for $130-$140

My bad, I meant to say it's a 2.5" drive -- so it's singular nature has to be accounted for in its price. 

[Suika]

Seagate - "You can't replace HDDs, we'll be relevant in the future."

Western Digital - "Yea good luck with that."

[ForsakenLive]

Hope WD doesn't screw up a good SSD brand.

[Clyne]

I think HDD's can continue to be useful on datacentres due to price, and the fact you might be able to recover date from fracked drives (although your setup should never de dependant on one drive). However I'm sure SSD's are better at archiving as they are much less fragile, but I don't have a source to back up that claim.

But for the average consumer, no one really NEEDS 4+ TB. We should see the first SSD drives surpass HDD capacity 2016/17, albeit with a hefty price tag. Prices will continue to plummet none the less. For most people, a much faster and power efficient SSD is much more important for their use cases.

So for your point, we might see HDD's be replaced completely by SSD's and tape in the future anyways.

There's a point where it's not HDD won't be fully replaced once SSD price per GB gets as cheap as price per GB for HDD. When you say 4TB...I find myself needing more hard drives everyday, I have like 2TB worth of storage and finding myself needing more drives to hold more data.

[EChondo]

I'm really curious as to where WD is going to go with this. Sandisk's products have already been reliable and cost effective, I'd hate to see price gouging and flawed products come from them as a result of this aquisition.

 

Oh well, gues we'll see what happens. Hopefully WD is just trying to secure a slice of the flash market before HDD die hehehe.

[Notional]

For the average user I agree, but for businesses there isn't much of a benefit to using SSDs over an HDD (depending on the server). So as long as the ultimate cost of an HDD -- including the drive, power consumption, and cooling -- is less than an SSD, and until SSDs write cycles become as high as HDDs (even though they're irrelevantly high for consumers there still not quite as high as HDDs unless that has changed recently) there will still be a place for HDDs in the enterprise environment. 

 

My bad, I meant to say it's a 2.5" drive -- so it's singular nature has to be accounted for in its price. 

 

Maybe not at the current price points, but you still get less power usage and lower temps, as well as higher reliability due to no mechanical parts. We are seeing prices halving almost every other year or so (should be faster), so SSD's are catching up in both prices an capacity.

But of course it all depends on use case scenarios. Often reading speed is more important. My point is that for backups and mass storage, tapes might take over what's left for HDD's in the next half to full decade.

 

There's a point where it's not HDD won't be fully replaced once SSD price per GB gets as cheap as price per GB for HDD. When you say 4TB...I find myself needing more hard drives everyday, I have like 2TB worth of storage and finding myself needing more drives to hold more data.

 

I think most people will switch to SSD's, even enterprises, before there is price parity between the two tech, as SSD's are much faster and uses less power.

 

Unless you are a content creator, needing 4TB is highly unlikely. Sure you can fill it up with all sorts of crap, but is there a need for it?

[79wjd]

Maybe not at the current price points, but you still get less power usage and lower temps, as well as higher reliability due to no mechanical parts. We are seeing prices halving almost every other year or so (should be faster), so SSD's are catching up in both prices an capacity.

But of course it all depends on use case scenarios. Often reading speed is more important. My point is that for backups and mass storage, tapes might take over what's left for HDD's in the next half to full decade.

 

 

I think most people will switch to SSD's, even enterprises, before there is price parity between the two tech, as SSD's are much faster and uses less power.

 

Unless you are a content creator, needing 4TB is highly unlikely. Sure you can fill it up with all sorts of crap, but is there a need for it?

I don't see tapes taking over the rule of HDDs since tapes are very slow but are good for long term -- permanent storage.

 

People said the same thing about 4MB drives. 

[BuckGup]

WD is a great company from myself and others. There hard drives usually have the best non fail rate so I can't see anything wrong.