Some time ago we informed you of Western Digital’s strategic decision to withdraw from the SSD market. A decision that had been planned for a long time, with the aim of concentrating exclusively on its hard disk drive business and the enterprise market rather than the consumer market. But if you return to our brief on the subject, it’s important to understand that this is a question of portfolio rather than product. Western Digital has split into two separate companies. The hard disk drive (HDD) business will continue to use the Western Digital (WDC) name, while the flash memory and SSD business will use the Sandisk (SNDK) name. This was a pragmatic capital operation, but one that perhaps overlooked the importance of the WD brand in the minds of the general public.
In fact, a recent leak has revealed that the Sandisk entity may not be able to rebuild everything from a marketing point of view. So, the WD-Black brand may live on, and this doesn’t seem to be just a rumor, since numerous references mentioning WD_Black SN8100 have appeared on the Internet, notably on Amazon.
WD_Black: a Sandisk trademark?
When we consult the product sheet on Amazon, we immediately understand that we’re not looking at a stock clearance with a few products to be discarded. This SN8100 reference will be available in 1TB, 2TB and 4TB capacities. Technical information published on Amazon also indicates that the drive is equipped with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface and boasts a maximum sequential read speed of 14,900 MB/s. These figures place this reference at the pinnacle of performance in this segment. The 1TB version is listed on Amazon’s European site at €200 for pre-order delivery in early June. So be careful with this price. By way of comparison, the current market benchmark is the Samsung 9100 Pro, priced at around €250… for 2TB.
