Unnamed WD worker claims WDLabs may close, end production for Raspberry Pi

Why it matters to you

If the recent rumor is true, fans of Raspberry Pi products looking for a dedicated storage product may need to grab the last of Western Digital’s stock.

Someone posing as a Western Digital employee recently indicated that WDLabs may close, as the company supposedly fired the group working under the WDLabs branch, and has no plans to manufacture new hard drives for the Raspberry Pi board. The comment appeared on Reddit and was quickly removed, but not before Google grabbed a copy.

At the time of writing, Western Digital has not provided any confirmation about a potential closing. A quick look at the WDLabs web page showed that the site was still active and showcasing the WD PiDrive, the WD PiDrive Enclosure, and other related products. The dedicated community was also still up and running here.

“WDLabs is an internal team of innovators assembled to create exciting new products for emerging customers and markets,” the home page states. “We engage directly with lead users to get honest feedback, while exploring new trends and ideas. By leveraging our engineering talent, we’re embarking on new territory to stay ahead of the curve.”

Under the WD PiDrive umbrella, WD provides five products ranging from $19 to $110 in price. For example, the WD PiDrive Compute Centre is a complete do-it-yourself kit with a Raspberry Pi 3 board, a MicroSD card preloaded with custom software, a 375GB hard drive, a black square enclosure, a wireless mouse, a wireless keyboard, and several cables (no HDMI).

The Raspberry Pi 3 is the third-generation Raspberry Pi board sold for a mere $35. The latest “Model B” edition consists of a quad-core processor clocked at 1.2GHz, 1GB of system memory, Wireless N and Bluetooth 4.1 connectivity, and a MicroSD card slot. It also includes four USB ports, an Ethernet port, an HDMI port, and other connections.

As shown here, the Raspberry Pi can be used to create all sorts of devices ranging from a portable computer for kids to a re-created Nintendo Entertainment System console. There are other boards produced by the Raspberry Pi Foundation to use as well, including the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3 for even smaller computing devices.

Raspberry Pi devices are extremely popular, and talk that WDLabs may close should be chalked up as mere rumor for now. However, the alleged WD employee said that customers were using the Raspberry Pi 3 and WD’s dedicated hard drive to run Bitcoin nodes, which require loads of storage. These nodes help broadcast messages across the bitcoin network, and validate transactions.

“Not sure if there will be an announcement, they might have enough inventory to last a while,” the individual said. “They aren’t going to make any more pi drives as far as I know, so if you’re interested in them I’d suggest you buy one now.”

Why WDLabs may close is unknown unless parent company Western Digital just isn’t making enough revenue off the dedicated products to keep the department running. And if what the alleged Western Digital worker claims is true, WDLabs may close without any fanfare whatsoever.