Western Digital Corporation (WDC) history, profile and corporate video
Western Digital Corporation (WDC) is a computer hard disk drive manufacturer and data storage company headquartered in San Jose, California, United States.
Western Digital can trace its roots back to 1956 when IBM invented the world’s first hard drive, the Model 350 Disk Storage Unit (aka the RAMAC), which was the size of a refrigerator and weighed 2,140 pounds (971kg), but could only hold roughly 5MB of data. This division of IBM was sold to Hitachi‘s storage division in 2003 before eventually being acquired by Western Digital.
The company we know today as Western Digital was founded in 1970 in Southern California.
In the early 70s, Western Digital was focused on selling calculator chips, soon becoming the largest independent calculator chipmaker in the world.
In 1976, Western Digital acquired the patent for the first disk array sub-system, the backbone of the modern storage environment.
In 1976, Western Digital also entered the data storage industry with its first line of floppy disc controllers, the FD1771.
In 1985, the company produced the first ESDI, or Enhanced Small Device Interface controller board, enabling PCs to run faster and store more.
In 1988, Eli Harari and his SanDisk colleagues introduced “System Flash”, a revolutionary storage medium that will replace HDDs in portable, battery-operated devices.
In 1990, Western Digital partnered with SanDisk (then SunDisk) to create the first commercial flash SSD.
In 1992, SanDisk collaborated with Kodak and Canon to standardize camera card slots.
In 1999, Western Digital partnered with TiVo to develop a 500MB external hard drive that could hold 140 hours of HD Content.
In 2000, the first USB flash drives were introduced to the public.
In 2000, the first USB flash drives were introduced to the public, and the SanDisk brand revealed a prototype of the world’s smallest USB flash drive with an impressive capacity to store 1TB.
In 2004, SanDisk and Motorola jointly introduced the TransFlash removable card for mobile phones, which was later renamed microSD.
In 2012, Western Digital completed the acquisition of HGST (Hitachi Global Storage Technologies), which became one of the largest data storage and infrastructure companies in the world.
In 2016, Western Digital acquired SanDisk for $16 billion.
In 2017, Western Digital introduced the iNAND 7250A embedded storage device that leverages flash storage technology for the automotive industry (autonomous cars).
In 2019, Western Digital partnered with Google, lowRISC and others to launch OpenTitan, the first open-source silicon root of trust (RoT) chips project.
ACQUISITIONS
- 1986: ADSI (SCSI controller chips);
- 1987: Faraday Electronics Inc. (core logic chipsets)
- 1988: hard drive production assets of Tandon;
- 2007: Komag (Hard disk media);
- 2012: HGST (HDD, SSD);
- January 2013: Arkeia Software (Backup Software);
- September 2013: sTec (SSD);
- October 2013: Virident (SSD, system and software)
- 2014: Skyera (Flash-storage arrays);
- 2015: Amplidata (Software);
- 2016: SanDisk (SSD, system and software, NAND flash, embedded);
- 2017: Upthere (Flash, persistent, cloud services);
- 2018: Wearable, Inc.;
- 2019: Kazan Networks (Flash storage technology).
PRODUCTS & SOLUTIONS
Western Digital offers a large portfolio of products and solutions, including Internal HDD, Internal SSD, Commercial Internal Drives, Data Center Drives, Data Center Platforms, Embedded Flash, USB Flash Drives, Commercial Removable Storage, Memory Cards, External Desktop Drives, Portable Drives, Personal Cloud and Network Attached Storage (NAS) Solutions, Accessories (adapters, covers, readers, etc.), and MP3 Players.
BRANDS
- WD brand;
- SanDisk;
- G-Technology.
With more than 70,000 employees, Western Digital Corporation (WDC) is one of the largest computer hard disk drive manufacturers. According to Forbes, it is considered one of the Top Regarded Companies and one of the Largest Public Companies in the World.
*Information from Forbes.com, Wikipedia.org, and www.westerndigital.com.
**Video published on YouTube by “VARINDIA“.