Western Digital Introduces WD Black PCIe Solid State Drives to Accelerate NVMe Adoption
Western Digital Corporation (“Western Digital”) (NASDAQ: WDC) today announced the availability of new WD Black® PCIe solid state drives (SSDs), the first WD-branded client PCIe SSDs. The new SSDs complement the
recently announced WD Blue® and WD Green® SATA SSDs, as well as the company’s industry leading family of hard drives for PCs and
workstations, providing a full portfolio of WD storage devices for virtually any application.
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WD Black PCIe High-performance NVMe SSDs (Graphic: Business Wire)
The WD Black PCIe SSD is a performance PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe-based SSD that delivers more than three times the sequential read
speeds of current SATA SSDs. The 256GB and 512GB capacities make it ideal as a boot drive when paired with a high-capacity hard
drive, or as primary storage when building a future-ready PC. Consumers who are using the new WD Black PCIe SSD to boot up, load
read-intensive games or applications, or shut down a system may realize a performance improvement of more than 10 seconds when
compared to SATA SSDs.1
“NVMe PCIe-based SSD adoption is poised to accelerate in 2017 and the years to follow,” said Jeff Janukowicz, vice president,
IDC. “Products like the WD Black PCIe SSD, with a broad ecosystem and compatibility testing, should give customers a
significant performance increase over SATA SSDs and offer a straightforward solution for customers to update to or build
future-ready systems.”
As a compatible and reliable solution to ramp up newer PC configurations with PCIe performance,
the WD Black PCIe SSD is the ideal storage solution for the performance PC enthusiast and for more demanding gaming and
VR-focused applications. The WD Black PCIe SSD delivers more than three times the sequential read performance of SATA SSDs, an
industry-leading 1.75M hours MTTF, and WD Functional Integrity Testing (F.I.T.) Lab certification. The WD Black PCIe SSD has been
designed with thermal and power management algorithms beyond the NVMe specification to help with consistent performance as well as
low power consumption.
Like all WD SSDs, the WD Black PCIe SSDs include free, downloadable, WD SSD Dashboard software, which allows continuous
performance, capacity monitoring, and firmware updates.
“We are in the midst of a once-in-a-generation interface change,” says Eyal Bek, senior director of client SSD, Devices Business
Unit, Western Digital. “The WD Black PCIe SSD ramps up performance while delivering worry-free reliability for our customers
worldwide. We believe that this will accelerate the transition that is already occurring from SATA to PCIe. Western Digital is
uniquely positioned to offer customers a complete storage portfolio—HDD or SSD, and SATA or PCIe form factors for every segment of
the market.”
“ASUS is dedicated to advancing technologies and leading innovation. WD and ASUS worked closely together to ensure that the WD
Black PCIe SSD delivers performance that our customers expect with hassle-free installation and use. With the latest ASUS
motherboards and WD Black PCIe SSDs, gamers can focus on winning rather than the distraction of waiting for games or levels to
load,” said Joe Hsieh, corporate vice president and general manager, Motherboard Business Unit and New Product Planning Division,
ASUS.
Pricing and Availability
WD Black PCIe SSD
WD Black PCIe SSDs will be available in 256GB and 512GB capacities in a single-sided M.2 2280 form factor. The WD Black PCIe SSD
boasts up to 2050MB/s and 800MB/s sequential read and write speeds, a 5-year limited warranty and WD F.I.T. Lab™ certification for
compatibility with many leading platforms. Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) for the WD Black PCIe SSD start
at $109.00 USD for the 256GB and $199.99 for the 512GB. The WD Black PCIe SSD will be available worldwide and on www.wd.com during the first half of 2017.
About Western Digital
Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ: WDC) is an industry-leading provider of storage technologies and solutions that enable
people to create, leverage, experience and preserve data. The company addresses ever-changing market needs by providing a full
portfolio of compelling, high-quality storage solutions with customer-focused innovation, high efficiency, flexibility and speed.
Our products are marketed under the HGST, SanDisk and WD brands to OEMs, distributors, resellers, cloud infrastructure providers
and consumers.
Forward Looking Statements
This news release contains certain forward-looking statements, including the approximate price and estimated product
availability of the WD Black PCIe SSD and expectations for the acceleration of the transition from SATA to PCIe, that are based on
current expectations and involve numerous risks and uncertainties that may cause these forward-looking statements to be inaccurate.
Risks that may cause these forward-looking statements to be inaccurate include among others: our product offerings may not be
available at the price and time we expect, the transition from SATA to PCIe may not accelerate as expected and other risks detailed
from time-to-time in Western Digital’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings and reports, including, but not limited to, our
most recent annual report on Form 10-K to which your attention is directed. This news release contains information from third
parties, which reflect their projections as of the date of issuance. All statements made in this news release are made only as of
the date of this release. Western Digital undertakes no obligations to update the information in this release in the event facts or
circumstances change after the date of this release.
Apps, services, and other features are subject to change based on your location, software version, device model, and third party
service providers.
Western Digital, WD, the WD logo, F.I.T. Lab, WD Black, WD Blue and WD Green are registered trademarks or trademarks of Western
Digital Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other marks are the property of their respective
owners. Pictures shown may vary from actual products. Product specifications subject to change without notice. Not all products may
be available in all regions of the world. As used for storage capacity, one gigabyte = one billion bytes and one terabyte = one
trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment.
© 2017 Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
1 Comparison based on 256GB WD Blue and WD Black PCIe SSD tested using an ASUS Z170A ATX DDR4 motherboard, Intel
I76700K 4.00 GHz 8M Processor Cache 4 LGA, 16GB 2133MHz DDR4 DRAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 graphic card. OS: Windows 10 Pro 64bit,
with Internet connection. Software: Batman: Arkham Knight - Windows Standard Edition
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WDC Press Relations
Heather Skinner, 949.672.7920
heather.skinner@wdc.com
or
WDC Investor Relations
Bob Blair, 949.672.7834
robert.blair@wdc.com
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170104006422/en/