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.

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.