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Western Digital shuts down factory for hard drives, opens one for SSDs
While there always remains a user-base for traditional mechanical hard drives, the trend obviously is NAND storage. Western Digital will be closing a production facility in Malaysia, this year already as the demand for HDDs is on the decline.
The new has been confirmed with The Register. On the opposing side, WD will open up a new SSD factory. The location that will be closed is Petaling Jaya in Malaysia. A WD spokesperson mentioned that the HDD assembly site will be halted by the end of next year, and ramp up flash drive manufacturing; In response to declining long-term demand for client HDDs, Western Digital has taken steps to rationalize its HDD manufacturing operations globally. The company will decommission its HDD manufacturing facility in Petaling Jaya, Selangor, by the end of calendar 2019. This transition will be executed in close collaboration with employees, customers, supply partners and other critical stakeholders.
The data technology industry is undergoing substantial change. This market transformation is driving increased adoption of SSDs and NAND flash in traditional HDD applications. The change has contributed to growth in SSD/NAND flash and declining long-term demand for client HDDs. Consequently, Western Digital plans to expand SSD manufacturing in Penang. The company is in the final stages of commissioning its second SSD facility in Penang, which will go into production in the coming months. Thanks to its flash fab joint-venture with Toshiba, WD has a broad line of solid-state drives, and can sell them instead of hard disk drives in markets suffering HDD shipment erosion.
"Impacted employees will receive assistance, including severance compensation and upskilling support," a WD spokesperson told us. "Western Digital will retain a Center of Excellence in Selangor. This center will have several key engineering teams, core operational planning and regional support functions. They will relocate to new offices within Selangor.
"Western Digital remains firmly committed to Malaysia. The company values and appreciates its 45-year history of partnership with the Malaysian government and looks forward to many more years of shared prosperity and success.”
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k3vst3r
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Posts: 3361
Joined: 2009-01-03
#5565973 Posted on: 07/18/2018 02:51 PM
Probably just reducing supply, so prices of HDD climb, basically don't want make HDD's when price is just about breaking even. Not sure when it's forecast, but writing is on the wall for HDD as long term NAND flash chips going replace spinners for same price per GB of storage. Believe Samsung upto 96 layers now for their NAND chips? more layers per chip means price per chip is going down whilst storage per chip is climbing.
Probably just reducing supply, so prices of HDD climb, basically don't want make HDD's when price is just about breaking even. Not sure when it's forecast, but writing is on the wall for HDD as long term NAND flash chips going replace spinners for same price per GB of storage. Believe Samsung upto 96 layers now for their NAND chips? more layers per chip means price per chip is going down whilst storage per chip is climbing.
Fox2232
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Joined: 2012-07-20
Senior Member
Posts: 10141
Joined: 2012-07-20
#5565974 Posted on: 07/18/2018 02:57 PM
I am surprised.
Surely there is more than enough demand for mainframes/co-lo/DR/cloud and of course companies like Google to store data?
Hate to sound like someone who prefers vinyl over mp3s, but platter drives over silicon must be cheaper for datacentres around the world?
tap tap tap...Are we really at the point where the cost of running a datacentre is so high that more expensive silicon drives are better than platter?
Maybe they detected systematic cause for slow decline in demand for HDDs while SSDs are on rise?
I am surprised.
Surely there is more than enough demand for mainframes/co-lo/DR/cloud and of course companies like Google to store data?
Hate to sound like someone who prefers vinyl over mp3s, but platter drives over silicon must be cheaper for datacentres around the world?
tap tap tap...Are we really at the point where the cost of running a datacentre is so high that more expensive silicon drives are better than platter?
Maybe they detected systematic cause for slow decline in demand for HDDs while SSDs are on rise?
Kaarme
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Posts: 1888
Joined: 2013-03-10
Senior Member
Posts: 1888
Joined: 2013-03-10
#5565993 Posted on: 07/18/2018 03:44 PM
Lots of people, government offices, and businesses ought to be satisfied with only an SSD in their PCs, and maybe a single spinning HD in addition to it only when more space is required. Laptops will soon be a totally dead market for the traditional HDDs. So, its only the NAS, data centers/server farms, and some crumbs from the desktop PC market. It's a twilight business, even if the sun is setting really slowly.
Maybe they detected systematic cause for slow decline in demand for HDDs while SSDs are on rise?
Lots of people, government offices, and businesses ought to be satisfied with only an SSD in their PCs, and maybe a single spinning HD in addition to it only when more space is required. Laptops will soon be a totally dead market for the traditional HDDs. So, its only the NAS, data centers/server farms, and some crumbs from the desktop PC market. It's a twilight business, even if the sun is setting really slowly.
Ricepudding
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Posts: 586
Joined: 2017-02-17
Senior Member
Posts: 586
Joined: 2017-02-17
#5566009 Posted on: 07/18/2018 04:07 PM
Arent HDD's basically dead already on laptops, from what i see any new models made in the last couple of years either come with an SSD or an m.2 drive. Most people would be happy with a single SSD on their drives, they only need it for some documents, windows and music, 250gb or even 500gb is more than enough for the normal user. Gamers might need a bit more if they play lots of games at once, this is the last place you see people get HDD's for storage reasons.
Though i am sure i am not the only one who has switched over to purely SSD and m.2 drives in their system. Agree with the last bit though, its basically data centres who are left buying this for 99% of cases, if SSD falls down close enough to the £/$ per GB then they would switch in a heartbeat since SSD's are more reliable not to mention faster and last longer. I've yet to have a single SSD fail on me, and from the tests ive seen most of these should last well over 10 years and newer models even longer
Lots of people, government offices, and businesses ought to be satisfied with only an SSD in their PCs, and maybe a single spinning HD in addition to it only when more space is required. Laptops will soon be a totally dead market for the traditional HDDs. So, its only the NAS, data centers/server farms, and some crumbs from the desktop PC market. It's a twilight business, even if the sun is setting really slowly.
Arent HDD's basically dead already on laptops, from what i see any new models made in the last couple of years either come with an SSD or an m.2 drive. Most people would be happy with a single SSD on their drives, they only need it for some documents, windows and music, 250gb or even 500gb is more than enough for the normal user. Gamers might need a bit more if they play lots of games at once, this is the last place you see people get HDD's for storage reasons.
Though i am sure i am not the only one who has switched over to purely SSD and m.2 drives in their system. Agree with the last bit though, its basically data centres who are left buying this for 99% of cases, if SSD falls down close enough to the £/$ per GB then they would switch in a heartbeat since SSD's are more reliable not to mention faster and last longer. I've yet to have a single SSD fail on me, and from the tests ive seen most of these should last well over 10 years and newer models even longer
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I am surprised.
Surely there is more than enough demand for mainframes/co-lo/DR/cloud and of course companies like Google to store data?
Hate to sound like someone who prefers vinyl over mp3s, but platter drives over silicon must be cheaper for datacentres around the world?
tap tap tap...Are we really at the point where the cost of running a datacentre is so high that more expensive silicon drives are better than platter?