Mystery No More: WD’s Black SSHD Equipped with SanDisk SSD

When WD announced its first SSHD (SSD+HDD) drives a couple of weeks ago, simply named WD Black and WD Blue (sounds a little violent), I didn’t pay much attention to the NAND flash that’s found inside of the Black version. But – some company has to be responsible for it, right? While WD has manufactured some SSDs, going by the fact that I can’t find them in stock anywhere, the company has halted things to figure out what to do next. When it did make SSDs, it didn’t make them that small. Certainly not as small so as to fit inside of a 5mm drive.

A company that does produce miniature SSDs is SanDisk, so for WD, it was the sensible choice for a partner. The WD Black includes a SanDisk iSSD inside – typically seen in notebooks and Ultrabooks for caching purposes, eg: the exact same thing WD is going for here, except confined to a single drive design.

Unless WD is banking huge on the success of these small SSHDs, it seems doubtful that its dealings with SanDisk are going to end here. I wouldn’t be surprised to see 2.5″ and desktop SSHDs from the company in the future – but this is pure speculation. I’d just be surprised to see both companies coming together for a single product, especially after WD has seemingly stepped back from the SSD side of things.

On a side note, if you’re looking to better understand just how small WD’s latest drives actually are, look no further than this post from yesterday.