Western Digital today announced WD Blue and WD Green solid state drives (SSDs), the first WD-branded SATA client SSDs following the acquisition of SSD and NAND flash manufacturer SanDisk. Th WD Blue and WD Green SSDs boast near-maximum speed of SATA drives, 1.75M hours MTTF and WD Functional Integrity Testing (F.I.T.) Lab certification. Both include free, downloadable, WD SSD Dashboard software, which allows continuous performance and capacity monitoring.

WD Blue SSDs are optimized for multitasking and resource-heavy applications. The series is actually based on the SanDisk X400 SATA SSD with some minor hardware changes but has modified firmware and different usable capacities. It is available as either a 2.5" or M.2 drive and uses SanDisk 15nm TLC NAND with the Marvell 88SS1074 controller.

WD Blue SSDs are available in 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities, and in both 2.5-inch/7mm case or M.2 2280 form factors. The SSD offers up to 545MB/s and 525MB/s sequential read and write speeds, and endurance up to 400 TBW. Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) ranges from $79.00 USD to $299.00 USD and are available now.

The WD Green SSD is an entry-level product. Based on the SanDisk SSD Plus, it uses a Silicon Motion controller in a DRAM-less configuration with SanDisk 15nm TLC NAND.

Available in 120GB and 240GB capacities, and in both 2.5-inch/7mm case or M.2 2280 form factors, WD Green features sequential read and write times of up to 540MB/s and 405MB/s and endurance up to 80TBW. WD Green SSDs will be available later this quarter.

Both WD Blue SSDs and WD Green SSDs are protected by a 3-year limited warranty.

Redesigned Lines of My Passport and My Book Hard Drives

Western Digital also today introduced redesigns of its My Passport, My Passport for Mac, and My Book hard drive lines.
In partnership with fuseproject, an industrial design and branding firm, the products include password protection and hardware encryption .

The My Passport drives will come in six colors – Black, Yellow, Red, White, Orange and Blue. The My Passport for Mac drive is available in a Black color. The desktop storage device, My Book, combines personal style with a massive amount of storage space, up to 8 TB. Each storage device comes with an automatic backup solution as well as password protection.

The new WD products include:

• My Passport portable hard drives
  • New design with textured bottom
  • Password protection with 256-bit AES hardware encryption
  • Automatic backup with included WD Backup software
  • Up to 4TB capacity
• My Passport for Mac drives
  • New design with textured bottom
  • Password protection with 256-bit AES hardware encryption
  • Formatted for Mac OS X and Time Machine ready
  • Up to 4TB capacity
    
    My Book desktop hard drive for PC and Mac
    Password protection with hardware encryption
    Automatic backup with included WD Backup software
    Up to 8TB capacity
    

My Passport drives have a Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) starting at $79.99 USD and the My Passport for Mac drive has a starting MSRP of $79.99 USD. My Book drives have a Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) starting at $129.99 USD.