WD Black PCIe NVMe Solid State Drives Announced At CES 2017

WESTERN DIGITAL INTRODUCES WD BLACK PCIE SOLID STATE DRIVES TO ACCLERATE NVME ADOPTION

LAS VEGAS, Nev., Jan. 4, 2017 — 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 companys industry leading family of hard drives for PCs and workstations, providing a full portfolio of WD storage devices for virtually any application.

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 highcapacity hard drive, or as primary storage when building a future-ready PC. Consumers who are using new the 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 VRfocused 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 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 occurring from SATA to PCIe. Western Digital is uniquely positioned to offer customers a complete storage portfolioHDD 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 singlesided 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.