Western Digital’s Award-Winning WD Blue SSD Goes NVMe

Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC), a global data infrastructure leader, is accelerating the NVMe transition of value-PC storage by adding an NVMe™ model to its award-winning WD Blue® solid state drive (SSD) portfolio, the WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD. The new SSD delivers three-times the performance of its SATA counterpart¹ while maintaining the reliability the WD Blue product line is known for. For content creators and PC enthusiasts, the WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD is optimized for multitasking and resource-heavy applications, providing near-instant access to files and programs.

Leveraging the scalable in-house SSD architecture of the highly acclaimed WD Black® SN750 NVMe SSD, the new WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD is also built on Western Digital’s own 3D NAND technology, firmware and controller, and delivers sequential read and write speeds up to 1,700MB/s and 1,450MB/s respectively (for 500GB model) with efficient power consumption as low as 2.7W.* Since demands on storage are continuing to grow and client workloads are evolving, the WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD features high sustained write performance over SATA as well as other emerging technologies on the market today to give that performance edge.

“The PC industry continues its transition from SATA to the NVMe protocol, along with the expectation from consumers that computers continue to become faster and more responsive,” said Don Jeanette, TrendFocus. “Within the mainstream segment, content creators are consistently doing more, such as editing 4K or 8K video files, creating and streaming content, and managing massive amounts of data internally. The new WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD will enable larger file loads that require faster storage.”

“Content transitioning from 4K and 8K means it’s a perfect time for video and photo editors, content creators, heavy data users, and PC enthusiasts to transition from SATA to NVMe,” said Eyal Bek, vice president marketing, data center and client computing, Western Digital. “The WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD will enable customers to build high-performance laptops and PCs with fast speeds and enough capacity in a reliable, rugged and slim form factor.”

Pricing and Availability

Perfect in slim form factor notebooks or desktop PCs, the WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD will be available in 250GB and 500GB capacities in a single-sided M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 x2 form factor. Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) in the U.S. is $54.99 USD for 250GB (model number: WDS250G1B0C) and $77.99 USD for 500GB (model number: WDS500G1B0C). For more information, visit the website: Western Digital.

*As used for transfer speed, megabyte per second (MB/s) = one million bytes per second. Performance will vary depending on your hardware and software components and configurations.

¹Based on the WD Blue SATA SSD maximum sequential read speed of 560MB/s and the WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD maximum sequential read of 1,700MB/s.

About Western Digital

Western Digital creates environments for data to thrive. The company is driving the innovation needed to help customers capture, preserve, access and transform an ever-increasing diversity of data. Everywhere data lives, from advanced data centers to mobile sensors to personal devices, our industry-leading solutions deliver the possibilities of data. Western Digital® data-centric solutions are comprised of the Western Digital®, G-Technology™, SanDisk®, Upthere™ and WD® brands.

Western Digital, the Western Digital logo, WD Black and WD Blue are registered trademarks or trademarks of Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and/or other countries. The NVMe™ mark is a registered trademark of NVM Express, Inc. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. As used for storage capacity, one gigabyte (GB) = one billion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment. Product specifications subject to change without notice. Pictures shown may vary from actual products. Not all products are available in all regions of the world.

© 2019 Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains certain forward-looking statements, including the expected availability, benefits, capacities, features, performance, pricing and versions of the WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD. There are a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause these forward-looking statements to be inaccurate including, among others: changes to specifications from standards organizations, volatility in global economic conditions; business conditions and growth in the storage ecosystem; impact of competitive products and pricing; market acceptance and cost of commodity materials and specialized product components; actions by competitors; unexpected advances in competing technologies; our development and introduction of products based on new technologies and expansion into new data storage markets; risks associated with acquisitions, mergers and joint ventures; difficulties or delays in manufacturing; and other risks and uncertainties listed in the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), including the company’s most recently filed periodic report, to which your attention is directed. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof, and the company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.