This article shows 3 reasons for the combination of Western Digital and SanDisk. Besides, this article displays a necessary toolkit MiniTool Partition Wizard to help you manage your SSD and other storage devices easily and conveniently.

Western Digital Buys SanDisk for $19 Billion

Western Digital buys SanDisk on Oct. 21, 2015, hard-disk drive maker Western Digital Corporation agreed to buy SanDisk for a total equity value of $19 billion in cash and stock.

Why WD did that? There were 3 main reasons.

3 Reasons for Western Digital Acquires SanDisk

Reason 1: Enter the Growing SSD Market

Western Digital, founded 49 years ago, is an industry-leading developer and manufacturer of storage solutions that enable people to create, manage, experience and preserve digital content, and it has its traditional business model built around volume business from the PC ecosystem.

Western Digital to acquire SanDisk for $19 billion

However, according to the Wall Street Journal, Western Digital was facing challenges to its core hard-disk-drive business in the past years, which has been under pressure from the success of sales of Apple Inc.’s iPad and other tablet computers that store data on flash-memory chips rather than on magnetic disks.

Here, this combination represents another effort by a leading vendor from traditional IT computing repositioning itself for the demands of digital IT computing.

SanDisk is a global leader in flash storage solutions. For more than 27 years, SanDisk has expanded the possibilities of storage, providing trusted and innovative products that have transformed the electronics industry.

WD boasts its HDDs for a long time. But with the development of SSDs, SSDs have displaced HDDs in higher-end tablets and PCs over the past few years since the former is smaller, faster, and doesn’t have damage-prone moving parts, which put a big impact on Western Digital.

From the image above, you can see the competition in the SSDs market. Western Digital just held 10.2%. That is to say, to enter the SSD market, WD needs to buy other companies like SanDisk for more market share.

Why does WD choose to acquire SanDisk rather than any other companies like INTC, and Samsung?

If WD plan to buy INTC (one of the world’s largest and highest valued semiconductor chip makers, based on revenue), the cost would be much higher. 

Note: Intel’s market capitalization is $162.97 billion (February 21, 2015).

Besides, it’s clear that Samsung will not work with WD since it has sold HDD division to Seagate with keeping its SSD business. And, WD didn’t acquire Micron largely because Micron’s SSD technology was in its infancy.

Reason 2: Access to the 3D NAND Flash Technology

What is NAND flash memory? It is a type of non-volatile storage technology that does not require power to retain data.

SanDisk is a major player in the NAND flash memory market with flash products spanning consumer flash cards and USB sticks to client and enterprise SSDs as well as storage systems and supporting software.

WD PC HDD business is declining because of the weak PC market but also because SSDs are encroaching that space.

Without access to NAND flash at cost, it would be difficult for WD to participate in that space and to compete with NAND players in the enterprise space.

According to Jeff Janukowicz, research vice president at IDC, this combination could give WD an instant foothold in the global, non-volatile NAND flash memory market, securing long-term access to SSD technology at a lower cost.

Reason 3: Remain Competitive

There is another factor: competition.

Seagate has already made strategic purchases in flash technology, including product lines that are direct competitors to SanDisk in the enterprise.

WD needed to access to SanDisk’s NAND technology to better compete in the market for solid-state drives used in cloud computing, data centers, smartphones, and laptops.

Influence and Development after WD Buys SanDisk

For Western Digital

As the storage industry attempts to reorient itself with an eye on the future, the acquisition seemed like a very canny move on the part of the hard disk giant.

With this acquisition, WD gets the substantial non-volatile memory (NVM) intellectual property and acquired flash memory manufacturing through the SanDisk jointed venture with Toshiba. In addition, this combination enabled WD to vertically integrate into NAND.

create a global leader in storage technology

For Both WD and SanDisk

Besides, WD and SanDisk’s complementary product lines (HDDs, SDDs, cloud datacenter storage solutions and flash storage solutions) will provide the foundation for a broader set of products and technologies from consumer to data center.

The two sides have strong R&D and engineering capabilities and a rich base of fundamental technologies with over 15,000 combined patents issued or pending worldwide.

For Storage Component Business

Finally, this combination could undoubtedly trigger other mergers and acquisitions in the storage component business. Within a few years, the non-volatile memory industry could undoubtedly look much different than it does today.

Necessary Tool for WD and SanDisk Users to Install

Next, we are going to introduce a program that can help you get most from both WD and SanDisk’s products like HDDs, SDDs, memory cards and USB drives.

In the information age, mechanical hard disk drive, solid-state drive and other storage devices including SD card and USB drive play a great role in our world.

For instance, we store massive important data and files on hard disk drive and SSD; we install or transfer our operating system to SSD to optimize computer performance; we use USB drive to transfer some data.

However, it is believed that many people have ever encountered partitioning problems and data loss issues. For example, space of storage devices is missing; we failed to align SSD partitions or migrate OS. But fortunately, most issues could be easily solved by MiniTool’s products.

MiniTool Partition Wizard, a free and green partition magic, offers excellent features (like extend partition, copy partition, etc.) to help users manage partitions on both hard disk and removable devices easily and quickly.

# Extend the Partition Which Runs in Low Disk Space with MiniTool

Someday you may find one of the partitions on your SSD (especially boot partition) just has several GB or less free space left. At this time, it’s a wise choice to use the Extend Partition feature provided by MiniTool Partition Wizard, because it can help you enlarge the partition without any data loss.

MiniTool Partition Wizard FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Here is the tutorial on extending partition via MiniTool Partition Wizard.

Step 1: Download this software, install it and launch it to get its main interface.

the main interface of MiniTool Partition Wizard

Step 2: In the Disk Map, select the partition which runs in low disk space, and click the Extend Partition feature from the left panel. (Here I take partition E for example)

activate the Extend Partition feature

Step 3: Choose an unallocated space or existing partition from the drop-down list of Take Free Space from to take free space to enlarge the previously selected partition, and next drag sliding button to decide how much space to take. Finally, click the OK button.

decided how much you want to take to enlarge the selected partition

Step 4: Click the Apply button to make all changes performed.

click the Apply button to execute all changes

Compared with the Extend Volume feature of Disk Management, the Extend Partition feature of MiniTool Partition Wizard is more convenient. By the way, some times you may be unable to extend partition with Disk Management, you can click extend volume grayed out to learn about the reasons.

# Align SSD Partition for Better Performance

Compared with common hard disk, an SSD is much better largely because of its amazing speed. However, if partitions on SSD are misaligned, both read and write speed will be affected. Therefore, it is very necessary to align partitions when there are misaligned partitions on SSD.

As we know, under Windows 7 and later Windows OS, all newly created partitions will be aligned automatically.

However, if a partition on SSD has been operated (for example, we changed its size), it may become unaligned. Moreover, if partitions on SSD are copied from other disks, they are always unaligned.

In those cases, we need to align its partitions to enhance data read-write speed and optimize disk performance. For more information, please see the recommended article to know how to align SSD partition.

the Align Partition feature of MiniTool Partition Wizard

How Do I Align SSD Partition with a Free SSD Alignment Tool
How Do I Align SSD Partition with a Free SSD Alignment Tool

How to align SSD partition? MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition can help you align SSD partition with ease even if you are not a computer savvy.

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# Migrate OS to SSD

Nowadays, more and more people choose to replace the old system disk with a new SSD to optimize computer performance.

Some SSD manufacturers like Samsung offer data migration tools to help their users migrate OS, but problems appear frequently.

For more details, please see our previous post Failed to Migrate Your Disk or System to SSD? Try This Way.

Actually, you can turn to the Migrate OS to SSD/HD feature of MiniTool Partition Wizard, which has been proved to work well for this issue.

Here is the tutorial.

Step 1: Connect your SSD to your computer (it had better be connected via SATA).

Step 2: Click the Migrate OS to SSD/HD Wizard feature from the left Wizards column.

activate the Migrate OS to SSD/HD Wizard feature

Step 3: Choose a suitable way to migrate OS, and then click the Next button to get the following window.

  • Option A: This option will move all the partitions on the source disk to the target disk.
  • Option B: This option will only move the related system partitions to the target disk.

choose a migrating method

Step 4: Select your SSD as the target disk to hold the migrated partitions and click the Next button. Please note that you should back up the data saved in your SSD, because this operation will destroy all the data save on the target disk.

select SSD as the target disk

Step 5: In the new window, you are asked to edit the partition size and location, and choose one of the listed options you prefer. Since you will need to migrate OS to your SSD, please keep the Align partitions to 1MB option checked, which can improve your SSD performance. Finally, click the Next button.

edit partition size and location

Step 6: Read the not on the new pop=up window and click the Finish button.

click the Finish button

Step 7: Click the Apply button on the main interface.

# Recover Lost Data from Your SSD

A survey from data recovery companies shows SSD takes a big portion in the storage media from which people often lose their data. Therefore, how to easily and timely recover lost data from SSD has become a topic of concern.

MiniTool Partition Wizard can also help you restore deleted data as well as recover data from lost partition, RAW partition and formatted partition from SSD or other storage devices. How to recover lost data for an SSD? Please read the recommended article below.

Data Recovery on the main interface

The Full Guide to SSD File Recovery on Windows 10/8/7/XP
The Full Guide to SSD File Recovery on Windows 10/8/7/XP

Data can get lost from SSD due to various reasons like accidental deletion, formatting, etc. To know how to perform SSD file recovery, check out this post now.

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However, when recovering data from SSD with this tool, you have to pay attention to the Trim feature, which allows an operating system to inform an SSD which blocks of data are no longer considered in use and can be wiped internally.

If you mistakenly deleted files from an SSD with Trim enabled, you may have no chance to recover the lost data.

MiniTool Partition Wizard is a really useful and convenient toolkit to manage my SSD, like extending partitions, migrating OS from one disk to my SSD, and recovering the lost data from my SSD.Click to Tweet

Final Words

Now, you may get a basic understanding of the transaction that Western Digital buys SanDisk. If you are not clear enough about this combination and have encountered some issues with your SSD or other storage devices, please leave comments or contact us via [email protected] and we will try our best to solve it one by one.

Western Digital Buys SanDisk FAQ

Is SanDisk owned by Western Digital?
Yes. Western Digital acquired SanDisk by costing a total equality value of $19 billion in cash and stock. This was an awesome transaction.
When did Western Digital acquire SanDisk?

Western Digital acquired SanDisk on Otc.21, 2015. There were three reasons for this transaction.

  1. WD wanted to enter the Growing SSD market.
  2. WD wanted to access the 3D NAND Flash technology.
  3. WD wanted to keep competitive in the hard drive market.
How long do external hard drives last?
Generally, the lifespan of an external hard drive is about 3 to 5 years. Since the external hard drive is mechanic and it has moving parts, which means the hard drive will more easily fall. To avoid the data loss caused by hard drive failure, it is highly recommended that you back up your hard drive regularly.
Which Western Digital external hard drive is best?

You can try the following WD external hard drives.

  1. My Passport Ultra 4TB external hard drive;
  2. My Book Duo 4TB external hard drive;
  3. My Passport Wireless Pro external hard drive.
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