Western Digital’s new SSD portend a lot

Low end SSDs to staunch bleeding in magnetic storage

Oct 13, 2016 by

wdWestern Digital is portending the future of storage with two new SSDs, Green and Blue. It may sound like a minor blip but SemiAccurate thinks it is quite telling about where things are headed.

There are officially two lines to the new drives, the Blue is a higher-end 256GB-1TB line with higher performance, 545MBps sequential read and 525MBps write are claimed with an endurance of up to 400TBW. Green is the lower-end drive line rated at 540MBps read and 405MBps write along with an endurance of 80TBW. It comes in 120 and 240GB capacities.

Blue is a decent drive, obviously limited by the SATA bus as most drives are nowadays while the Green an OEM special with a consumer sticker on it. Neither will set the world on fire with technical specs, they are just solid working drives that get the job done. The high-end Blue has an MSRP of $299 for the 1TB model and a mere $79 for the 256GB, Green is notably below that. As you can tell these are volume parts, not enthusiast number chasers.

Note: The following is for professional and student level subscribers.

Disclosures: Charlie Demerjian and Stone Arch Networking Services, Inc. have no consulting relationships, investment relationships, or hold any investment positions with any of the companies mentioned in this report.

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Charlie Demerjian

Roving engine of chaos and snide remarks at SemiAccurate
Charlie Demerjian is the founder of Stone Arch Networking Services and SemiAccurate.com. SemiAccurate.com is a technology news site; addressing hardware design, software selection, customization, securing and maintenance, with over one million views per month. He is a technologist and analyst specializing in semiconductors, system and network architecture. As head writer of SemiAccurate.com, he regularly advises writers, analysts, and industry executives on technical matters and long lead industry trends. Charlie is also available through Guidepoint and Mosaic. FullyAccurate