Western Digital has lost 6.5 Exabytes of Flash memory due to contaminated materials
Memory and storage device maker Western Digital has confirmed that contaminated materials have been introduced into its manufacturing plants in Yokkaichi and Kitakami. These factories have them in common with KIOXIA, another company dedicated to storage devices.
the contaminated material has affected at least 6,5 exabytes of NAND flash. This is equivalent to 6.815.744 TB of memory, a huge amount of data that has been lost due to contaminated materials.
Western Digital suffers from a shipment of contaminated materials
Western Digital has commented that are currently working to restart the production of NAND memory at both facilities together with KIOXIA. This contamination of the material and its associated production problems may reduce the availability of NAND in the short term. 6,5 exabytes of NAND is not a small amount of NAND, especially when you look at that 6,8 million+ TB that could have been converted to memory in SSDs.
Whether this contamination issue will have a noticeable impact on global NAND prices remains to be seen. Most likely, it will be noticed both in the price and in the availability of products that make use of this type of memory, so it is very likely that physical hard drives will not be so affected. Western digital has released the following statement in this regard:
Western Digital Corp. (Nasdaq: WDC) announced today that contamination from certain materials used in its manufacturing processes is affecting production operations at its Yokkaichi and U.S. joint venture flash memory manufacturing facilities. Kitakami.
Western Digital's current assessment of the impact is a reduction in its flash availability of at least 6,5 exabytes. The company is working closely with its joint venture partner, Kioxia, to implement the necessary measures to restore the facility to normal operating status as soon as possible.
Western Digital
