Western Digital Introduces WD Black PCIe Solid State Drives to Accelerate NVMe Adoption

LAS VEGAS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–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.

The WD Black PCIe SSD is a performance PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe-based SSD that
delivers more than three times the sequential read speeds of current
SATA SSDs. The 256GB and 512GB capacities make it ideal as a boot drive
when paired with a high-capacity hard drive, or as primary storage when
building a future-ready PC. Consumers who are using the new WD Black
PCIe SSD to boot up, load read-intensive games or applications, or shut
down a system may realize a performance improvement of more than 10
seconds when compared to SATA SSDs.¹

“NVMe PCIe-based SSD adoption is poised to accelerate in 2017 and the
years to follow,” said Jeff Janukowicz, vice president, IDC. “Products
like the WD Black PCIe SSD, with a broad ecosystem and compatibility
testing, should give customers a significant performance increase over
SATA SSDs and offer a straightforward solution for customers to update
to or build future-ready systems.”

As a compatible and reliable solution to ramp up newer PC
configurations with PCIe performance, the WD Black PCIe SSD is the ideal
storage solution for the performance PC enthusiast and for more
demanding gaming and VR-focused applications. The WD Black PCIe SSD
delivers more than three times the sequential read performance of SATA
SSDs, an industry-leading 1.75M hours MTTF, and WD Functional Integrity
Testing (F.I.T.) Lab certification. The WD Black PCIe SSD has been
designed with thermal and power management algorithms beyond the NVMe
specification to help with consistent performance as well as low power
consumption.

Like all WD SSDs, the WD Black PCIe SSDs include free, downloadable, WD
SSD Dashboard software, which allows continuous performance, capacity
monitoring, and firmware updates.

“We are in the midst of a once-in-a-generation interface change,” says
Eyal Bek, senior director of client SSD, Devices Business Unit, Western
Digital. “The WD Black PCIe SSD ramps up performance while delivering
worry-free reliability for our customers worldwide. We believe that this
will accelerate the transition that is already occurring from SATA to
PCIe. Western Digital is uniquely positioned to offer customers a
complete storage portfolio—HDD or SSD, and SATA or PCIe form factors for
every segment of the market.”

“ASUS is dedicated to advancing technologies and leading innovation. WD
and ASUS worked closely together to ensure that the WD Black PCIe SSD
delivers performance that our customers expect with hassle-free
installation and use. With the latest ASUS motherboards and WD Black
PCIe SSDs, gamers can focus on winning rather than the distraction of
waiting for games or levels to load,” said Joe Hsieh, corporate vice
president and general manager, Motherboard Business Unit and New Product
Planning Division, ASUS.

Pricing and Availability

WD Black PCIe SSD

WD Black PCIe SSDs will be available in 256GB and 512GB capacities in a
single-sided M.2 2280 form factor. The WD Black PCIe SSD boasts up to
2050MB/s and 800MB/s sequential read and write speeds, a 5-year limited
warranty and WD F.I.T. Lab™ certification for compatibility with many
leading platforms. Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) for the
WD Black PCIe SSD start at $109.00 USD for the 256GB and $199.99 for the
512GB. The WD Black PCIe SSD will be available worldwide and on www.wd.com
during the first half of 2017.

About Western Digital

Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ: WDC) is an industry-leading
provider of storage technologies and solutions that enable people to
create, leverage, experience and preserve data. The company addresses
ever-changing market needs by providing a full portfolio of compelling,
high-quality storage solutions with customer-focused innovation, high
efficiency, flexibility and speed. Our products are marketed under the
HGST, SanDisk and WD brands to OEMs, distributors, resellers, cloud
infrastructure providers and consumers.

Forward Looking Statements

This news release contains certain forward-looking statements, including
the approximate price and estimated product availability of the WD Black
PCIe SSD and expectations for the acceleration of the transition from
SATA to PCIe, that are based on current expectations and involve
numerous risks and uncertainties that may cause these forward-looking
statements to be inaccurate. Risks that may cause these forward-looking
statements to be inaccurate include among others: our product offerings
may not be available at the price and time we expect, the transition
from SATA to PCIe may not accelerate as expected and other risks
detailed from time-to-time in Western Digital’s Securities and Exchange
Commission filings and reports, including, but not limited to, our most
recent annual report on Form 10-K to which your attention is directed.
This news release contains information from third parties, which reflect
their projections as of the date of issuance. All statements made in
this news release are made only as of the date of this release. Western
Digital undertakes no obligations to update the information in this
release in the event facts or circumstances change after the date of
this release.

Apps, services, and other features are subject to change based on your
location, software version, device model, and third party service
providers.

Western Digital, WD, the WD logo, F.I.T. Lab, WD Black, WD Blue and WD
Green are registered trademarks or trademarks of Western Digital
Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and/or other countries. All
other marks are the property of their respective owners. Pictures shown
may vary from actual products. Product specifications subject to change
without notice. Not all products may be available in all regions of the
world. As used for storage capacity, one gigabyte = one billion bytes
and one terabyte = one trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies
depending on operating environment.

© 2017 Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates. All rights
reserved.

¹ Comparison based on 256GB WD Blue and WD Black PCIe SSD
tested using an ASUS Z170A ATX DDR4 motherboard, Intel I76700K 4.00 GHz
8M Processor Cache 4 LGA, 16GB 2133MHz DDR4 DRAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950
graphic card. OS: Windows 10 Pro 64bit, with Internet connection.
Software: Batman: Arkham Knight – Windows Standard Edition

Contacts

WDC Press Relations
Heather Skinner, 949.672.7920
heather.skinner@wdc.com
or
WDC
Investor Relations
Bob Blair, 949.672.7834
robert.blair@wdc.com