SFF.Network WD Introduces WD Black PCIe NVMe SSDs

Las Vegas, NV - January 4, 2017 - 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.

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[ChainedHope]

Pricing isnt that bad, might pick one up (ive been putting off getting a m.2 drive for a while now)

 

[Phuncz]

Yep, we're finally seeing the PCIe M.2 drives edge closer to the SATA 2,5" drives. Which makes sense, there are less components and materials.

 

[jeshikat]

Ok, so that's one M.2 drive. Any bets on the ratio of M.2 to U.2 announced? I'm thinking 10:1 at least.

 

[Phuncz]

Why some new Z270 boards have U.2 is beyond me. Maybe Intel promised them more models in the future ? Now that people have begun acclimatizing to the new way of storage, I don't see much use-cases for U.2 anytime soon. All we need is some kind of easy install/remove (TB3 protocol anyone ?) and M.2 has a place in the mainstream secured.

 

[jeshikat]

Yup, I think U.2 is dead. I'm going to keep a tally of the M.2 and U.2 drives announced at CES and do a post-mortem post.

 

[confusis]

I believe I literally LOL'd when I was covering the Kaby Lake board with the U.2 connector

 

[Phuncz]

I LOL'ed the most at the board with the Parallel port.
Also funny is the SATA Express port included on some boards seems to be just for front panel I/O.

 

[EdZ]

Also funny is the SATA Express port included on some boards seems to be just for front panel I/O.

Which is kind of neat really. Plenty of boards have a readily available cable-connected PCIe 2x link that has seen little use.

 

[no_one]

To some degree, I feel like U.2 almost has more potential in mainstream SFF systems than M.2 on account of motherboard surface area. Storage away from the board makes a whole lotta sense when you don't have a lot of board to work with. I mean sure, if you're building in a custom < 2L STX case (extreme example) or something then M.2 is an obviously superior choice, but most people aren't. Personally, I'd love to see a mITX board with a 2 or more of U.2 connectors. As far as drive availability is concerned, 2.5" M.2 enclosures that terminate in SFF-8639 are pretty easy to find.

Anyways, back on topic. Pretty exited to see some benchmarks of this drive given the price. Hopefully the speeds they're claiming hold up. If they do, this'll be undoubtedly one of the better options for $200 or less.

 

[Phuncz]

Which is kind of neat really. Plenty of boards have a readily available cable-connected PCIe 2x link that has seen little use.

That's true, although I wouldn't have made the point if you didn't need the entire SATA Express connector including the two SATA ports for the I/O panel. Along with the SATA power and USB power connector. That's quite a lot for a 2-port solution that has half the needed bandwidth for two ports.

So maybe if there would be an adapter that allows a panel-mount USB-C connector using just the PCIe part of SATA Express (allowing usage of the SATA ports) and SATA power for the power needed to feed the needed 12V and 5V feeds, this would have been a much better save of the connector that never even got a chance to prove itself.