Western Digital stops producing SSDs

Western Digital (WD), one of the leading manufacturers of solid-state drives and hard drives, is discontinuing the production of SSDs. The company has officially completed the separation of its NAND memory division, transferring it to SanDisk.

WD will now focus exclusively on hard drives, and SSD production will be continued by SanDisk, which actually led this direction last year. WD’s flash operations initially depended on the production of Kioxia (formerly Toshiba), and most likely SanDisk will continue to cooperate with this or another supplier, for example Samsung.

For users, this means only a change of brand: new WD SSDs will no longer appear, but analogues will be sold under the SanDisk brand. However, the question of positioning remains open – the SanDisk name is traditionally associated with memory cards, not high-performance SSDs.

This move was not a surprise, since it was announced back in October 2023. Additionally, WD has recently faced problems in this segment, including lawsuits over SanDisk external SSD failures.

Gamers accustomed to the WD Black SN850X and other popular models will now have to rely on SanDisk products or competitors such as Samsung and Crucial.