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1970s

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Alvin B. Phillips founded Western Digital was founded on April 23, in 1970, by Alvin B. Phillips, a Motorola employee, as General Digital.[1][2] The company, initially (and briefly) a manufacturedr of MOS test equipment. It rapidly became a speciality semiconductor makercomputer chips, particularly calculator chips, with start-up capital provided by several individual investors and industrial giant Emerson Electric.[3] One year later, the company Around July 1971, it adopted its current name[4] and soon introduced its first product, the WD1402A, the first single-chip universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter (UART).[5] Later that decade, the company debuted a 4K RAM chip.[4]

The company was financed by Emerson Electric Company and investors, to sell calculator chips through the early years of the 1970s, and by 1975, Western Digital was the largest independent calculator chip maker in the world. The oil crisis of the mid-1970s and the bankruptcy of its biggest calculator customer, Bowmar Instrument,[6] changed its fortunes, however, and in 1976 Western Digital declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. After this, Emerson Electric withdrew their support of the company. Note: The source from this paragraph is available online here, but it doesn't mention Western Digital.

Western Digital introduced several products during the late 1970s, including the MCP-1600 multi-chip, microcoded CPU. The MCP-1600 was used to implement DEC's Digital Equipment Corporation's LSI-11 system.[7] and their own Pascal MicroEngine microcomputer which ran the UCSD p-System Version III and UCSD Pascal. However, the WD integrated circuit that arguably drove Western's forward integration was The processor was also used in several single-chip floppy disk drive controller chips, including notably the FD1771,.[8] one of the first single-chip floppy disk drive formatter/controllers, which could replace significant amounts of TTL logic.

1980s

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The FD1771 and its kin were Western Digital's first entry into the data storage industry; by In the early 1980s, they were the company began making hard disk drive controllers. Kathryn Braun became the head of the company's storage products unit in 1982 and has been credited with driving tremendous growth of the division over the following 15 years,[9] increasing its income from $15 million to more than $2 billion.[4] In, and in 1983, they won the contract to provide engineers at the company created a prototype in just two weeks of a controller for the IBM with controllers for the PC/AT.[4] That The PC/AT controller, the WD1003, became the basis of the ATA interface (which Western Digital developed along with Compaq and Control Data Corporation's MPI division, now owned by Seagate Technology), starting in 1986. Throughout most of the 1980s, the family of controllers based on the WD1003 provided the bulk of Western Digital's revenues and profits, and for a time generated enormous corporate growth. debuted the next year as the first Winchester hard drive controller card.[2] Subsequently, the company shifted its focus to creating components for the growing market of personal computers.[4] In 1985, the company created the first Enhanced Small Device Interface controller board, which enabled PCs to use faster hard drives with larger capacities.[2] Storage controller products generated almost 90 percent of the company's income in that year.[4]

Western Digital Paradise VGA card, 8-bit ISA bus, circa 1989

Much of the mid-to-late 1980s saw an effort by In the later part of the decade, Western Digital to use the profits from their ATA storage controllers to become a general-purpose worked to position itself as an OEM hardware supplier for the PC industry. As a result, Western Digital and purchased a number of several hardware companies.[4] These included graphics cards (through its Paradise subsidiary, purchased 1986, which became Western Digital Imaging),[10][11] core logic chip sets (by purchasing Faraday Electronics Inc. in 1987),[12] and SCSI controller chips for disk and tape devices (by purchasing ADSI Adaptive Data Systems Inc. in 1986).[13], networking (WD8003, WD8013 Ethernet and WD8003S StarLAN). They did well (especially Paradise, which produced one of the best VGA cards of the era), but storage-related chips and disk controllers were their biggest money makers. In 1986, they introduced the WD33C93 single-chip SCSI interface, which was used in the first 16-bit bus mastering SCSI host adapter, the WD7000 "FASST"; in 1987 they introduced the WD37C65, a single-chip implementation of the PC/AT's floppy disk controller circuitry, and the grandfather of modern super I/O chips; in 1988 they introduced the WD42C22 "Vanilla", the first single-chip ATA hard disk controller.

1988 also brought what would be the biggest change in Western Digital's history. That year In 1987, Western Digital bought announced it would buy the hard drive production assets of PC hardware maker Tandon; the first products of that union under Western Digital's own name were the "Centaur" series of ATA and XT attachment drives.[citation needed] in order to broaden further Western Digital's range of PC equipment products.[14] The company joined the Fortune 500 the next year[4] and signed a lease in preparation for its move to Irvine, California, in 1990.[15]

1990s

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Western Digital Tidbit 60 (WDAH260) - 62.3 MB (2.5 inch drive mounted in 3.5 inch adapter bracket)
Western Digital Caviar 80 MB (model number WDAC280-32), from a series of HDDs for desktop PCs; it is a 3.5-inch HDD mounted onto a 5.25-inch adapter bracket.

By 1991, things were starting to slow down, as the PC industry moved from ST-506 and ESDI drives to ATA and SCSI, and thus were buying fewer hard disk controller boards. That year saw the rise of Western Digital's Caviar drives, brand new designs that used the latest in embedded servo and computerized diagnostic systems.

Eventually, the successful sales of the Caviar drives resulted in Western Digital starting to sell some of its divisions. Paradise was sold to Philips, and since disappeared. Its networking and floppy drive controller divisions went to SMC Networks and its SCSI chip business went to Future Domain, which was later bought out by market leader Adaptec. Around 1995, the technological lead that the Caviar drives had enjoyed was eclipsed by newer offerings from other companies, especially Quantum Corp., and Western Digital fell into a slump.

Products and ideas of this time did not go far. The Portfolio drive (a 3-inch (76 mm) form factor model, developed with JT Storage) was a flop, as was the SDX hard disk to CD-ROM interface. Western Digital's drives started to slip further behind competing products, and quality began to suffer; system builders and PC enthusiasts who used to recommend Western Digital above all else, were going to the competition, particularly Maxtor, whose products had improved significantly by the late 1990s.

In 1990, Western Digital debuted its first 3.5-inch Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) drive in its Caviar line. Three years later, the company progressed to "Enhanced IDE", which exceeded 528MB-throughput and allowed users to attach optical and tape drives to the unit.[2]

Despite the success of the Caviar line, the company struggled during this period, as did the computing industry in general.[4] During a 15-month period in 1990 and 1991, the company lost $172 million and downsized some properties and staff. Four of the six major disk-drive manufacturers also reported losses during this time.[16]

Charles A. Haggerty, an executive at IBM, became the company's president in 1992;[17] he later became CEO. In 1998, Braun, the highest-paid female executive in Orange County, retired as the company's president and chief operating officer.[9]

In an attempt to turn the tide Also in 1998, Western Digital recruited the help of started a new partnership with IBM. This agreement gave Western Digital the rights to use certain IBM technologies, including giant magneto-resistive (GMR) heads and access to IBM production facilities. The result was the Expert line of drives, introduced in early 1999. The idea worked, and Western Digital regained respect in the press and among users, even despite a recall in 2000 (which was due to bad motor driver chips). Western Digital later broke ties to IBM.[4]

2000s

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Western Digital WD740GD 74 GB Raptor, a 10,000 rpm 3.5-inch HDD

In 2001, Western Digital became the first manufacturer to offer mainstream ATA hard disk drives with 8 MiB of disk buffer. At that time, most desktop hard disk drives had 2 MB of buffer. Western Digital labeled these 8 MB models as "Special Edition" and distinguished them with the JB code (the 2 MB models had the BB code). The first 8 MB cache drive was the 100 GB WD1000JB, followed by other models starting with 40 GB capacity. Western Digital advertised the JB models for cost-effective file servers. In October 2001, Western Digital restated its prior year results to reflect the adoption of SEC Staff Accounting Bulletin No.101 and the reclassification of Connex and SANavigator results as discontinued operations.[18]

In 2003, Western Digital acquired most of the assets of bankrupt, formerly one-time market-leading magnetic hard drive read-write head developer Read-Rite Corporation.[19] Within seven months, the acquisition added to the company's earnings, nine months ahead of schedule.[20] In the same year, Western Digital offered the first 10,000 rpm Serial ATA HDD, the WD360GD "Raptor", with a capacity of 36 37 GB and an average access time of less than six milliseconds. Soon, the 74 GB WD740GD followed, which was also much quieter. In 2004, Western Digital redesigned its logo for the first time since 1997, with the design of new logo focusing on the company's initials ("WD").[21] In 2005, Western Digital released the 150 GB version, the WD1500, which was also available in a special version with a transparent window enabling the user to see the drive's heads move over the platters while the drive read and wrote data. As of 2004, the Western Digital Raptor drives have a five-year warranty, making them a more attractive choice for inexpensive storage servers, where a large number of drives in constant use increases the likelihood of a drive failure. While the company designed the Raptor for enterprise applications, it also became popular with gamers. The Raptor X followed in 2006, with a capacity of 150 GB and a transparent window showing its inner hardware.[2]

In 2006, Western Digital introduced its My Book line of mass market external hard drives that feature a compact book-like design.[22] On October 7, 2007, Western Digital released several editions of a single Later additions increased its capacity to 1 TB hard drive, the largest in its My Book line. and then 2 TB.[23][24]

In 2007, Western Digital acquired magnetic thin-film media maker Komag.[25] Also in the same year, Western Digital adopted the company announced it had created a hard drive with a record-setting density of 520 GB per square inch with the use of perpendicular recording and tunneling magneto-resistive technology in its line of notebook and desktop drives.[26] This allowed it to produce notebook and desktop drives in the largest classes of the time. Western Digital also started to produce the energy-efficient GP (Green Power) Green Power (GP) range of drives.[27]

In 2007, Western Digital announced the WD GP drive touting rotational speed "between 7200 and 5400 rpm", which is technically correct while also being misleading; the drive spins at 5405 rpm, and the Green Power spin speed is not variable.[28] WD GP drives are programmed to unload the heads whenever idle for a very short period of time.[29] Many Linux installations write to the file system a few times a minute in the background.[30] As a result, there may be 100 or more load cycles per hour, and the 300,000 load cycles rating of a WD GP drive may be exceeded in less than a year.[31]

Two third-generation 1 TB VelociRaptors in IcePack mounting frames

On April 21, In 2008, Western Digital announced the next a new generation of its 10,000 rpm SATA WD Raptor series of hard drives. The new drives, called WD VelociRaptor, featured 300 GB capacity and 2.5-inch (64 mm) platters enclosed in the IcePack, a 3.5-inch (89 mm) mounting frame with a built-in heat sink.[32] Western Digital said that the new drives are 35 percent faster than the previous generation. On September 12, 2008, Western Digital shipped a 500 GB 2.5-inch (64 mm) notebook hard drive which is part of their Scorpio Blue series of notebook hard drives.

On January 27, In 2009, Western Digital shipped the first 2 TB internal hard disk drive.[33] On March 30, 2009, they A few months later, the company entered the solid-state drive market with the acquisition of Siliconsystems, Inc SiliconSystems.[34] Its acquisition was unsuccessful, and few years later Western Digital discontinued all solid-state storage products based on Siliconsystems design (SiliconEdge and SiliconDrive families of SSDs and memory cards), but its inventions was used later in development of various other solid-state storage products, with larger developments going on after 2016 acquisition of SanDisk. On July 27, 2009, Western Digital A few months after that, the company announced the first 1 TB mobile hard disk drive, which shipped as both a Passport series portable USB drive as well as a Scorpio Blue series notebook drive.[35][36]

In October 2009, Western Digital announced the shipment of the first 3 TB internal hard disk drive, which has 750 GB-per-platter density with SATA interface.[37]

  1. ^ "Where in the World Wide Web Is Al Phillips?". IEEE Spectrum. 1 May 2009. Retrieved 2 January 2019.
  2. ^ a b c d e Farrance, Rex (13 September 2006). "Timeline: 50 Years of Hard Drives". PCWorld. Retrieved 2 January 2019.
  3. ^ Harris, Robin (28 June 2018). "Western Digital shakes up data storage". ZDNet. Retrieved 3 January 2019.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j "Western Digital Corp. History". Funding Universe. Retrieved 3 January 2019.
  5. ^ "Chip Hall of Fame: Western Digital WD1402A UART". IEEE Spectrum. 30 June 2017. Retrieved 3 January 2019.
  6. ^ Smith, William D. (February 11, 1975). "Bowmar Will Ask Reorganization". The New York Times. p. 55.
  7. ^ "Western Digital adds MCP-1600 Micro". Computerworld: 26. 26 November 1975. Retrieved 3 January 2019.
  8. ^ Michalopoulos, Demetrios A (October 1976). "New Products: Single-chip floppy disk formatter/controller". Computer. 9 (10): 64. doi:10.1109/C-M.1976.218414."The FD1771 is a single-chip floppy disk formatter/controller that interfaces with most available disk drives and virtually all types of computers."
  9. ^ a b Huffstutter, P.J. (21 August 1998). "Western Digital Executive Gives Kingdom for a Life". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  10. ^ "Acquisition Completed by Western Digital Corp". Los Angeles Times. 5 December 1986. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  11. ^ Takahashi, Dean (6 July 1990). "Suit Says Western Digital Violated Graphics Patents". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  12. ^ "Briefs". Network World. 11 May 1987. p. 10. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  13. ^ Feibus, Michael (17 July 1986). "Western Digital Set to Acquire Pomona Firm". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  14. ^ Olmos, David; Bates, James (8 December 1987). "Western Digital Will Buy Tandon's Hard-Disk Manufacturing Business : Seen as Move to Broaden Computer Products Line". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  15. ^ Flagg, Michael (22 January 1988). "Irvine Co. Signs Western Digital to $60-Million Lease". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  16. ^ Takahashi, Dean (19 January 1992). "Tough Times Challenging Western Digital Chairman". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  17. ^ Markoff, John (27 May 1992). "COMPANY NEWS; I.B.M. Executive Is Named President of Western Digital". The New York Times. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  18. ^ "Western Digital Reports $4 Million Profit in HDD Business on Revenue of $441 Million, Unit Shipments of 5.4 Million". October 25, 2001. Retrieved September 10, 2013.
  19. ^ Smith, Tony (24 July 2003). "Western Digital buys up Read-Rite assets". The Register. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  20. ^ "Read-Rite buy pays off for Western Digital". San Francisco Business Times. 28 August 2003. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  21. ^ "Western Digital Launches New Logo with Universal Appeal". October 6, 2004. Archived from the original on October 17, 2015. Retrieved August 21, 2015.
  22. ^ Ngo, Dong (15 June 2006). "My Book Premium Edition review". CNET. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  23. ^ Smith, Tony (3 October 2006). "Western Digital ships 1TB RAID-able external HDD". The Register. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  24. ^ Melanson, Donald (24 July 2007). "Western Digital rolls out 2TB My Book external hard drives". Engadget. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  25. ^ Auchard, Eric (28 June 2007). "Disk drive consolidation as Western buys Komag". Reuters. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  26. ^ Fallon, Sean (17 October 2007). "Western Digital Announces Record Breaking Hard Drive Density". Gizmodo. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  27. ^ Rothman, Wilson (23 July 2007). "Western Digital Launches Efficient GreenPower Drives, From 320GB to 1TB". Gizmodo. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  28. ^ "WD Green Mobile Series Spec Sheet" (PDF). WDC. June 26, 2013. Retrieved January 21, 2013.
  29. ^ "hdparm(8) - Linux manual page". man7.org. November 2012. Retrieved March 31, 2014. Get/set the Western Digital (WD) Green Drive's "idle3" timeout value. This timeout controls how often the drive parks its heads and enters a low power consumption state. The factory default is eight (8) seconds, which is a very poor choice for use with Linux. Leaving it at the default will result in hundreds of thousands of head load/unload cycles in a very short period of time.
  30. ^ "discussion list". Arch Linux. If linux tends to write to /var/log/* every 30s, then the heads can park/unpark every 30s.
  31. ^ WD Green Spec Sheet (PDF), WD
  32. ^ Wilson, Mark (21 April 2008). "Western Digital Velociraptor Is New "Fastest Hard Drive Ever"". Gizmodo. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  33. ^ "Western Digital launches 2TB hard drive". ZDNet. January 27, 2009. Retrieved January 27, 2009.
  34. ^ Hruska, Joel (30 March 2009). "Western Digital goes solid state, acquires SiliconSystems". Ars Technica. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  35. ^ "WD ships industry's first 1 TB mobile hard drive". WDC. July 27, 2009. Retrieved July 27, 2009.
  36. ^ Murph, Darren (27 July 2009). "WD ships industry's first 2.5-inch 1TB hard drive". Engadget. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  37. ^ "WD's New 3TB Drive Packs More Storage Than 32-Bit Can Handle". WIRED. Retrieved January 22, 2016.
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