Just as Western Digital announces it has shipped 10 million helium-filled HDDs since the technology launched almost four years ago, it has also unveiled its first consumer-focused SSDs in the form of WD Blue and WD Green.
Western Digital first shipped its HelioSeal range of helium HDD products in 2013, whcih have since exploded in popularity with businesses. The company said their benefits include increased capacity and more efficient cost of ownership.
"Extreme capacity hard drives are increasingly a key value enabler for enterprise applications and Western Digital continues to be a technology and time-to-market leader in terms of delivering capacity-optimised enterprise HDDs," said John Chen, vice president of Trendfocus.
"As cloud and traditional enterprise customers continue to develop applications that make use of all of their accessible data, high density drives will be a crucial component that enable cost-effective storage of that data at scale. Western Digital's HelioSeal platform has proven to be a key differentiator that addresses high capacity needs."
Western Digital said its helium-filled HDDs have stored 76 exabytes of data across its 10TB devices and it predicts using the technology has saved over 1 million kilowatt hours (KWh) of operating power each day, which is half the power required for 8TB air-filled drives.
"Western Digital is firmly committed to enabling an era where data is abundant and immediately accessible," said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing, Western Digital.
"The velocity at which Western Digital achieved this milestone underscores the avid need for data ubiquity across cloud and on-premise. Architects who design for hyperscale environments are sparking rapid innovation because they understand how data fluency across an organization informs smarter decisions. This is key to unlocking the power of data."
Western Digital also announced its first consumer-grade devices, which have launched as a result of its Sandisk acquisition. The WD-branded Blue SSDs come in 250 GB, 500 GB and 1 TB capacities, while the lowered-powered Green SSDs are available in 120GB and 240GB versions.
