Looks like we won't be seeing Western Digital SSDs in our gaming PCs as the company hands the reins back over to SanDisk
Western Digital (WD) is one of the most recognisable brands for both SSDs and hard drives, alongside Samsung and Crucial. So it's no small thing that you might not see WD SSDs for much longer, as the company will no longer make or sell them.
That's because, after a long time in the works, last week WD has announced it has successfully separated itself from the portion of its business that previously produced and sold NAND products. This SSD side of the business is now spun off completely into SanDisk, and WD is a HDD-only business.
WD CEO Irving Tan put forth a vision for the newly-split company, explaining: "Our rich history of delivering top-notch HDD innovation has defined us for decades, and I am excited for us to further deepen our commitment to delivering the best storage capabilities to our customers going forward."
Those HDD customers are, of course, ones that require laaarge amounts of storage.
For us gamers, of course, SSDs are where it's at, so for us at least this is a departure from good ol' Wessy Dig', a fond farewell. Some of our favourite products have been WD ones. In fact, the best SSD for gaming right now is still the WD Black SN850X.
That's a staple design, too. Can you imagine the WD_Black design without the WD? Well… okay, I can, too… but it's just not the same, is it?
But I suppose it's not as if the SSD production is actually going anywhere. It's just a corporate shuffle, a spin-off. SanDisk will take over the reins—reins it had already taken over, in fact. Anything flash memory related was already migrated over to SanDisk last year, including the purchase of WD SSDs. And the plans for this were announced all the way back in October 2023, so it's not as if we weren't prepared.
And SSD production will presumably continue as usual. It's not as if WD was using its own production facilities anyway. As our Nick explained back in 2023, the company uses Kioxia's (ie, Toshiba's) manufacturing plants for NAND production. Presumably that can continue, or different production facilities (Samsung's, for instance) be used at SanDisk's discretion.
Nothing should mean very much for us, other than presumably not seeing those 'WD' letters plastered in command-line font plastered across the front of SanDisk's future SSDs. And surely we can't have 'SD' on there instead, given those letters will make people think of tiny flash drives for cameras and handhelds ("that's an SSD, not an SD, silly!").
We'll see what the future holds, but for now, a fond farewell to Western Digital from us PC gamers.
Best SSD for gaming: The best speedy storage today.
Best NVMe SSD: Compact M.2 drives.
Best external hard drive: Huge capacities for less.
Best external SSD: Plug-in storage upgrades.