Inside Western Digital: How Tomorrow's Storage Gets Made

[Guest]

Rarely, if ever, are press outlets allowed unrestricted access to R&D facilities. We jumped at the chance to visit Western Digital and tour the company's campus with virtually free reign. Get ready to see hard drives as you've never seen them before.

Inside Western Digital: How Tomorrow's Storage Gets Made : Read more

 

[zelog]

I'm guessing the metal plate on the floor in picture 29 is slightly elevated to let the water drain.

 

[alagadnidonald]

a video tour like the one from AMD Dresden would have been 10x better...

 

[johnbilicki]

There are a lot of DOA complaints on Newegg and even with 40% of that place is required to make sure the drive works before it leaves the building it still has to go through shipping...UPS shows up eight hours after FedEx and the drive it dead because during shipping your package was the substitute baby for 'kick the baby'.

 

[johnbilicki]

DOA for all drives (even SSD), not just WD.

 

[milosz]

It's amazing that all this precision work and exotic manufacturing technology can be had for $150

 

[anamaniac]

Awesome. =D
I've switched to Samsung drives though. ^_^

And at the pic on page 26, she's checking her farmville. (At my job we hired an insanely expensive technician to fix some really expensive equipment, which he did with his laptop... and he has checking his farmville... at a few hundred dollars per hour on the company dime of course.)

Interesting that there appeared to be no drainage for the emergency shower. They just jerry rig that thing up at the last moment and hope no one has to use it?

Also, that walkthrough video is quite depressing. Yellow rooms as far as the eye can see, without a smile in sight.

Thank you very much for this wonderful article. As much as I'd like to, I doubt I could ever work there, because my handa aren't stable enough just to take a damned picture, nevermind handle extremely precise equipment. =)

But I wonder, how many drive failures have they had because an employee dropped a contact into the drive?

Also, great to see that little sneak preview on WD NAND based storage.

Now, how about Intel and 32nm?

 

[kikireeki]

And a new HDD is born and it is DOA! "sarcasm"

I just hope that WDD has done it right this time!

 

[jhanschu]

I'm under the assumption that most of the pictures were taken in a "clean room" environment. As such, the floor grating would be elevated (as previously mentioned) for the laminar air flow and there may possibly be a drain below. Also if I noticed correctly, the ceiling "tiles" were actually HEPA filters.

 

[g00ey]

I'm not buying that every step visualized on these photos are being applied to each and every platter that is manufactured on this facility. For example I don't think they examine the layers of every platter in the TEM. I believe the photos don't only show the manufacturing line but also some of the research facilities for next generation products.

I think the manufacturing process is very much like an assembly line process where the production flow is rather fluent which is not the impression I get at a first glance when looking through these photos. They obviously achieve som degree of economies of scale. It would be interesting too see some figures such as how long it takes to produce a platter, head, and so on and how many units/components per hour that is being produced etc.

Then look at for example picture 28 (or 25-32); I don't understand how these large electoplated platters turn into read/write heads of a harddrive. I don't see the part where these wafers are punched into small needles (sliders/heads) and how this is done.

 

[neiroatopelcc]

I find it marvelous to see all this expensive hightech and amongst those things find old crt monitors and I think in one picture about #20 I even spotted an old hp dx2000 in the right side of an image (in front of an older 13" or so crt. Really nice to see expensive mashinery associated with expensive downtime being operated using windows antique and old hardware. Seems you don't always NEED a quadcore to be effective.

Great article btw. Not sure I share the authors humor, but I suppose it beats kevins.

 

[Guest]

Nice walktrough but hey it's 2010. You should put bigger, less compressed images than these 1999. thumbnail sized pics.

 

[r0x0r]

[citation][nom]Kubiksovs[/nom]Nice walktrough but hey it's 2010. You should put bigger, less compressed images than these 1999. thumbnail sized pics.[/citation]

Click the zoom button then click on the image you want to see at full size

 

[JohnnyLucky]

Nice article.

 

[Jaans]

Please, these images are too small. At this size you might as well leave them out. At least offer the option to see a much larger image when clicking on image.

 

[Jaans]

My point above is that even the so called "Zoom" images are way too small to enjoy this story.

 

[cangelini]

Clicking once opens the gallery. Clicking the image in the gallery will open the full-sized shot. I know there is some debate as to the efficiency of this three-click process (mainly, it's not), and I've opened up some dialog here with regards to ways we can improve it. In the meantime, however, I simply right-click->open in new tab when I want to use the gallery without losing my place in the editorial content.

 

[neiroatopelcc]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]Clicking once opens the gallery. Clicking the image in the gallery will open the full-sized shot. I know there is some debate as to the efficiency of this three-click process (mainly, it's not), and I've opened up some dialog here with regards to ways we can improve it. In the meantime, however, I simply right-click->open in new tab when I want to use the gallery without losing my place in the editorial content.[/citation]
When you enter the dialogue consider suggesting the designers to make scripts perform according to standards. After all the javascript bugs have been around for like a year now without anyone solving it. (the one where, in ie7,ie8,chrome or firefox3, clicking submit just gives a 'javsscript void' statement in the status bar but doesn't submit anything ; usually rating and citing doesn't work in those situations either, but not always) or perhaps suggest making the talkback equal on both toms hardware and guide. Sometimes on toms guide the links to talkback aren't in the 'news' section of the forum which generates a different layout where our belowed avatars are still shown but the citation and rating features are less available due to design.
Also the login bug should be adressed some time - u know ... the one in ie where you're being redirected to an error page if you don't press escape quickly enough (to stop faulty script playback likely caused by the adds).
Anyway the gallery's annoying too ofc. Not only the fact that images aren't sorted in the order the article uses them, but also the multistage opening you mentioned.

 

[gtvr]

background of image 2 - guy with a beard and no face mask?

 

[neiroatopelcc]

[citation][nom]gtvr[/nom]background of image 2 - guy with a beard and no face mask?[/citation]
That was the dressing room no? perhaps he just wasn't dressed up yet

 

[g00ey]

[citation][nom]gtvr[/nom]background of image 2 - guy with a beard and no face mask?[/citation]
A pub with no beer and a man with no beard ...

 

[Zink]

Stop using this picturestory layout. Do it in pages or with a flash version that doesn't reload the whole page every time.

 

[liquid0h]

Cool walk thru Will. I love tours of facilities, especially something high tech like this. Keep it up!

 

[jsc]

Some people have all the fun.

 

[cadder]

Despite the click-click-click process, the images were great.

For quite awhile I've bought only WD drives. This gives me even more faith in the company.