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Western Digital To Aquire SanDisk For $19 Billion
- Thread starter mocoworm
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j_k_redtail
Member
No, Western Digital just bought a bunch of solid state drives.
They weren't competing brands so it's not elimination competition. (WD as far as I'm aware had no solid state, and Sandisk no mechanical or enclosures).
Is WD regarded as bad quality products when compared? I thought they were usually second or so in mechanical disk reliability?
Ol No Bones
Banned
Shoulda bought..
WD isn't bad at all, Seagate is the one that needs to die
But yeah it's a smart move for WD, SSD prices are starting to get really low and they need to be in that market.
NoblesseOblige
Banned
Only on the consumer end. I don't think SSD is adequate for servers yet.
Edit: Though what you say is still true. Their revenue would drop, so it's a good purchase for WD.
ClosingADoor
Member
Depends on what you use them for. I think Amazon is actually using SSDs in their cloud servers now.
Even if true, that's still a big hit to their revenue they'll need to replace. This fits the bill.
I'm assuming Sandisk makes money? Haven't looked into it or anything.
Consumer end is a big market though lol
Also random, does anyone know when/if we are expecting a big price drop in SSDs? I was hearing something about 3D stack tech driving prices down fast soon
Jezbollah
Member
Not really, but they make hybrid SSHDs.
NoblesseOblige
Banned
You are right. I had read your previous post differently and then reread it after posting. SanDisk at least makes money off their thumbdrives. We have hundreds of them at work purchased in bulk from a government/education supplier. Haven't used any of their SSDs though.
OmegaSkittle
Neo Member
SSDs have been dropping in price relatively quickly lately. Just the other day I saw a Samsung 850 EVO 500gb SSD for $144.
Expect great SSD deals this Black Friday.
That's what I'm waiting on, my 120 has done well, but cloning it to a 500GB SSD will be better lol also I can use the 120 for applications and games until it fills up
No, it's pretty good for consumers. WD didn't have much in the SSD space, this let's them get a foot in. We haven't lost anything, in fact the expertise WD have in the storage space, the reliability of WD drives, we've probably gained something - a company that has the resources to compete with the top dogs of the SSD market.
Not every takeover is instantly a bad thing, and it's reactionary and overly knee-jerky to dismiss a takeover as 'bad for consumers'.
Google's takeover of Motorola was fantastic, for example, we got some good-ass handsets for a while, from a company that hadn't been relevant for a while. Lenovo's takeover of Motorola does not seem to be so positive, with delayed updates to the OS software.
Same company, two takeovers, different impacts for consumers.
outunderthestars
Banned
Yep. It is usually a bad sign for a market when large players in that space start merging.
bennywhatever
Member
"The cloud" is just servers stored somewhere else, often with hard drives made by Western Digital.
I feel like people underestimate the server side of WD's operation. That's why they're acquiring Sandisk instead of the other way around.
Mysterious
Banned
Where do you think cloud data is stored though? It's certainly not in air, like actually clouds.
The magical cloud, killing storage companies and making Xbox a monster in a single day.
Megadragon15
Member
Seagate not Sandisk. Which explains Seagate's present hard drive quality.
Didn't Seagate buy out maxtor?
And form personal use, the Sandisk SSDs are decent and affordable. My 240gig is going very strong =D
This. Seagate's fail rate over 5 years is atrocious for some of their common drives.
When I was still working schools IT I think I filled our NAS box twice over with replacement Seagates that just failed, got sent back, and failed again.
WD at least seem VAGUELY competent....I'm not saying their drives never fail...but I use them for consumer level stuff.
To my knowledge I thought as of right now only Samsung was using the 3D Stack tech and was still charging crazy $$ for a slight performance bump in read and write speeds.
The going rate for a decent 500-512gig SSD is $150-$175 at the moment (Crucial and Sandisk have been very good to me). If you go Samsung, that price is for a 256gig model with some 'extra' performance, which is not worth the added price IMO.
racketpunch
Member
There's always a demand for HDDs especially with the "cloud".
Cute Dragon Here
Member
Huh. My future plans of getting a cheap SanDisk SSD would be quite funny, as that would mean I have a WD SSD + WD HDD. That's a lot of WDs.
Can't wait to see what they can come up with after that. IIRC, they did collaborate a bunch of times with their hybrid stuff, no?
Can't wait to see what they can come up with after that. IIRC, they did collaborate a bunch of times with their hybrid stuff, no?
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