SanDisk says goodbye to WD Blue and Black SSDs, hello to new “Optimus” drives
Ars Technica••general
Key Points:
- Western Digital announced a split into two companies: Western Digital for spinning hard drives and SanDisk for solid-state storage, reversing its 2012 acquisition of SanDisk for $19 billion.
- SanDisk is rebranding mainstream WD Blue and WD Black SSDs as SanDisk Optimus drives, maintaining model numbers but shifting branding to Optimus, Optimus GX, and Optimus GX Pro depending on performance tier.
- The new SanDisk Optimus SSDs retain similar technical distinctions as before, with Blue/Optimus 5100 using QLC memory, Black/Optimus GX 7100 using TLC memory, and the high-end Optimus GX Pro 8100 utilizing PCIe 5.0 and dedicated DRAM cache.
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