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WD Unveils PCIe Hard Drives

By - Source: Tom's Hardware US | B 16 comments

WD is slowly making the transition to PCIe SATA Express drives.

This week, Western Digital revealed its first PCI Express hard drives at COMPUTEX in Taipei. WD's initial drive introduces the new SATA Express interface. With faster transfer speeds and reduced power consumption from these new drives, WD is leading the way once again.     

With PCI Express technology recently launched on the Intel Series 9 chipset motherboard platforms, many hard drive vendors are following suit and releasing their compatible drives. The benefits of SATA Express are the increased speeds not attainable from standard SATA interface. 

"WD has been at the forefront of SATA technology, and we see a vibrant growth path for adoption of the future SATA Express Roadmap," said Matt Rutledge, senior vice president, storage technology, WD. "SATA will remain a standard for many years in many applications, and for customers who want to discuss a future beyond vanilla SATA, WD is ready to plan the future with them."

Unfortunately, WD didn't offer us any pictures. Luckily, we're dropping by the booth this week, so we'll be sure to get some photos for you.

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  • 1 Hide
    MANOFKRYPTONAK , June 3, 2014 2:35 PM
    Interested to see how much performance boost these get. Are these a new thing?
  • 1 Hide
    Emerald , June 3, 2014 3:03 PM
    Hardware manufacturer are switching drives from SATA to the new PCIe SATA Express standard
  • 1 Hide
    thundervore , June 3, 2014 3:15 PM
    Nice. Now all WD marketing have to do is confuse the hell out of it customers with naming these drives.

    Its bad enough we have WD Black (enterprise), WD Green (low power), WD Blue (normal), and now WD Purple (DVR / Video survalance). Now SSD too.

    Toms really need to fix their comment system!!!!
  • Display all 16 comments.
  • 2 Hide
    sublime2k , June 3, 2014 5:16 PM
    Quote:
    Nice. Now all WD marketing have to do is confuse the hell out of it customers with naming these drives.

    Its bad enough we have WD Black (enterprise), WD Green (low power), WD Blue (normal), and now WD Purple (DVR / Video survalance). Now SSD too.

    4 colors are too complicated for you? What would you say about Intel's nomenclature then...
  • 0 Hide
    11796pcs , June 3, 2014 5:20 PM
    Quote:
    Nice. Now all WD marketing have to do is confuse the hell out of it customers with naming these drives.

    Its bad enough we have WD Black (enterprise), WD Green (low power), WD Blue (normal), and now WD Purple (DVR / Video survalance). Now SSD too.

    Toms really need to fix their comment system!!!!


    Hopefully this isn't a double post.
    You forgot Black2, Se, Re, Xe, AV, and the VelociRaptor drives and these drives that confuse the Hell out of me: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/internal/retailkits/

    Here's WD's full catalog: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/catalog/

    There must be specialized firmware in each of the product lines. Still, I have difficulty believing hard drives can that significantly different from each other.
  • 2 Hide
    pjmelect , June 3, 2014 7:08 PM
    The trouble with using PCIe is that very few computers have free PCIe slots that are not already taken or obstructed by graphics cards.
  • 0 Hide
    Johan Kryger Haglert , June 3, 2014 7:10 PM
    Leading the way?

    Have we got 2 or 3 hard drive manufacturers now?

    2 major ones?

    Yay, the competition, much hard to lead ..
  • 0 Hide
    Johan Kryger Haglert , June 3, 2014 7:11 PM
    Quote:
    Nice. Now all WD marketing have to do is confuse the hell out of it customers with naming these drives.

    Its bad enough we have WD Black (enterprise), WD Green (low power), WD Blue (normal), and now WD Purple (DVR / Video survalance). Now SSD too.

    Toms really need to fix their comment system!!!!
    I don't agree with anything except the latest.

    But how you're moved between pages totally suck.
  • 2 Hide
    lp231 , June 3, 2014 7:26 PM
    WD Drives aren't confusing, Those color naming scheme are basically for consumers, while the rest is for enterprise.
    Consumer side:
    Velociraptor=10K rpm drive
    Black=Performance
    Blue=Mainstream
    Green=Power Saver
    Red=NAS
    Purple=DVR survalance
    Any other drives like, SE, RE, RE3, XE are enterprise drives and they don't use color schemes.
  • 2 Hide
    knowom , June 3, 2014 8:47 PM
    I won't buy another WD HD I've had 3 fail out of like 5 to hell with that piss poor reliability record in my experience with them on top of that SSD's just are a crap load better than rotating mechanical HD's.
  • 0 Hide
    thundervore , June 4, 2014 1:35 AM
    Quote:
    WD Drives aren't confusing, Those color naming scheme are basically for consumers, while the rest is for enterprise.
    Consumer side:
    Velociraptor=10K rpm drive
    Black=Performance
    Blue=Mainstream
    Green=Power Saver
    Red=NAS
    Purple=DVR survalance
    Any other drives like, SE, RE, RE3, XE are enterprise drives and they don't use color schemes.


    I completely forgot about Velociraptor and WD Red drives and I am not even an average customer lol.

  • 0 Hide
    Fierce Guppy , June 4, 2014 1:44 AM
    Just how much of a speed increase can WD get from a mechanical drive? It would have to be close to double before I'd even consider utilizing one from a very limited supply of PCI-E slots for that purpose.
  • 0 Hide
    iogbrideau , June 4, 2014 10:22 AM
    Quote:
    The trouble with using PCIe is that very few computers have free PCIe slots that are not already taken or obstructed by graphics cards.


    I don't think they use the same PCIe as we use for graphics cards. They aren't the only type of PCIe out there.
  • 0 Hide
    milkydoo , June 4, 2014 1:03 PM
    There's no way people are going to have 2-6 drives plugged into traditional PCIe slots on a full sized MB. I'm sure there will be a new standard for a "SATAx" port on the way, assuming it can't use the current sata ports.
  • 0 Hide
    lp231 , June 4, 2014 2:56 PM
    Some pictures on that drive and benchmarks!

    http://www.hardwarezone.com.sg/feature-wd-prototye-sata-express-drive-benchmarked
  • 0 Hide
    MidnightDistort , June 5, 2014 7:30 AM
    So these drives just perform better on a PCIe slot? That could be useful for those who store a heap of data and want everything on one machine.