Western Digital, a leader in the desktop, mobile, high-capacity enterprise and consumer markets for hard drives, today announced the availability of its second-generation WD S25 SAS drives (photo) and its latest WD RE SAS 3.5-inch drives for the traditional enterprise market. Shipping now, the 2.5-inch, 10,000 RPM, WD S25 with SAS 6 Gb/s interface hard drives offer IT professionals ultra-reliable and efficient, high-performance storage with new 450 GB and 600 GB capacities. The WD S25 line, including the previously released 147 GB and 300 GB capacities, is designed for mission-critical server and storage systems.

Also shipping now to OEMs, the new 3.5-inch, 7,200 RPM, WD RE SAS with 6 Gb/s interface hard drives offer 1 TB and 2 TB capacity points, and represent a key addition to WD's expanding enterprise product portfolio. The WD RE SAS drives mark an important commitment to the expansion of WD's SAS portfolio for high-capacity data center storage, storage area networks (SAN), network attached storage (NAS), direct attach storage (DAS), networked surveillance systems and cloud storage.

Western Digital today announced it is now shipping its new WD Scorpio Black 750 GB 7200 RPM 2.5-inch SATA hard drives for high-performance notebook computers and portable storage devices. One of the fastest hard drives on the market, WD Scorpio Black drives combine class-leading 7200 RPM spin speed and 16 MB cache to deliver maximum notebook performance. Now available in capacities up to 750 GB, the WD Scorpio Black hard drives provide creative professionals, gamers and PC enthusiasts with additional capacity they need to get their job done. Using Advanced Format (AF) technology, the WD Scorpio Black 750 GB hard drives also incorporate a variety of data-protection features to actively monitor and protect valuable data.

Western Digital (WD) announced a new line of Caviar Blue line of 3.5" SATA hard drives that make use of the SATA 6 Gb/s interface. Caviar Blue strikes a balance between performance and energy efficiency, it's a middle-ground between the performance-oriented Caviar Black, and energy efficiency-oriented Caviar Green. The drive uses a spindle speed of 7200 RPM. The new lineup of Caviar Blue drives also support 4K sectors, also known as Advanced Format. The drives are available in capacities of 250 GB, 320 GB, and 500 GB, which feature 16 MB cache; 750 GB and 1 TB, which feature 32 MB cache. Fairly standard pricing which are on par with prices of existing price per gigabyte of Caviar Blue drives, can be expected.

Western Digital Corp. today reported revenue of $2.4 billion, hard-drive unit shipments of 50.7 million and net income of $197 million, or $0.84 per share for its first fiscal quarter ended Oct. 1, 2010. In the year-ago quarter, the company reported revenue of $2.2 billion, shipped 44.1 million hard drives, and reported net income and earnings per share of $288 million and $1.25, respectively.

"In a quarter characterized by aggressive industry pricing, we remained solidly profitable, grew revenues and unit shipments year-over-year, and generated $390 million in cash from operations," said John Coyne, president and chief executive officer. "Our low-cost business model and strong balance sheet enable us to weather the seasonality and cycles of the hard drive industry such as we experienced during the last two quarters.

WD today announced that the company is shipping the world's largest capacity SATA hard drive. As the latest addition to its WD Caviar Green family of SATA hard drives, the new hard drives deliver up to a massive 3 terabytes (TB) of storage capacity on a single drive. WD is leading the industry in capacity for SATA hard drives by utilizing 750 GB-per-platter areal density and Advanced Format (AF) technology.

WD Caviar Green drives are an eco-friendly storage solution with WD GreenPower Technology, which reduces power consumption by enabling lower operating temperatures for increased reliability and decreases acoustical noise for quiet operation. The WD Caviar Green 2.5 TB and 3 TB hard drives are designed for use as secondary external storage and next-generation PC storage in 64-bit based systems.

WD, the world's leader in external storage solutions, today introduced its new My Passport Essential portable hard drive (photo), My Passport Essential SE portable hard drive (photo), and My Book Essential external hard drive (photo). All three drive families come in a variety of capacities and offer lightning-fast USB 3.0 connectivity. Highest industry capacity is another key feature for the My Book Essential drive, which is now available in 3 TB capacity, in addition to 1 and 2 TB capacities. Equipped with WD SmartWare visual backup software for automatic, continuous backup, these drives provide users the extra space they need to store or back up all of their digital memories, such as high-resolution photos and videos, along with music and other critical files, all in one place.

The drives not only take advantage of the latest blazing-fast USB 3.0 technology, but are also fully compatible with USB 2.0 connections for those who have yet to upgrade their computers to USB 3.0. When connected to a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 port, consumers can transfer data at speeds up to 150 MB/s. At that rate, a two-hour HD video will transfer in as little as three minutes. The same two-hour video would take approximately 13 minutes to transfer on a USB 2.0 port.

First surfaced earlier this year, Western Digital (WD) is just about ready with its newest line of VelociRaptor high-performance hard drives. The second generation of VelociRaptor will take a shot at much expensive solid state drives on two fronts: transfer speeds and access times, at highly competitive price-per-gigabyte. With transfer speeds, the new VelociRaptor drives offer sustained read speeds of 145 MB/s, while having access times of 3 ms, as close as it gets to flash storage. These are conventional (Winchester) hard drives with spindle-speeds of 10,000 rpm, double the areal density as its previous generation and having an onboard cache of 32 MB, with the standard SATA 6 Gb/s interface.

The actual drives come in thick 2.5" form-factor, with a 3.5" bay mounting frame that also serves as a heatsink since it has aluminum ridges. The drives have a noise-output of up to 37 dBA. WD rates its MTBF at 1.4 million hours, and backs it with a five-year company warranty. The drives come in capacities of 150 GB, 300 GB, 450 GB, and 600 GB with prices expected to be highly competitive with SSDs in terms of price-per-gigabyte, given its performance level.

Western Digital (WD) is reportedly giving its flagship performance hard drive, the VelociRaptor a specifications update with a new 600 GB model. The new VelociRaptor HDD will succeed a four generations of Raptor HDDs from the company. It will implement developments in areal density to place 600 GB of data onto two platters, a two-fold increase over the previous generation. A single-platter 300 GB model also seems to be on cards. The drive will also feature improved electronics with a 'significantly' larger cache. It is also indicated that the 600 GB model will be priced on par with what the current-generation 300 GB VelociRaptor was upon release (~$250).

In this era of SSDs, Western Digital believes it can still compete with high-performance HDDs. The new VelociRaptor will strike the right balance between price, performance, and capacity. A $250 HDD with 600 GB capacity seems to be a good deal compared to a 250 GB SSD which can go for as much as ~$700. Past models in the Raptor family of HDDs have come with high spindle speeds backed by large caches to give out high read-write speeds and low access times compared to other HDDs.

WD, the world's leader in external storage solutions, today introduced its smaller, smarter and more secure My Passport Essential and My Passport for Mac ultra-portable external hard drives featuring WD's new WD SmartWare software and equipped with hardware-based encryption. The new My Passport drives are more than 20 percent smaller than the previous generation My Passport.

The new portable drives with WD SmartWare software visually present consumers' data in a control center, providing them peace of mind that their precious photos, videos and files are securely protected. Available now at select retailers and the WD online store (shopwd.com), the new My Passport Essential and My Passport for Mac drives are offered in capacities ranging from 320 GB to 1 TB and come in a range of colors including Pacific Blue, Real Red, Cool Silver and Midnight Black.

WD today announced that it has commenced volume shipments of its 9.5 mm high, 2.5-inch notebook hard drives with 640 GB capacity. The WD Scorpio Blue 640 GB hard drives utilize 320 GB-per-platter technology and are designed for mainstream notebook computers. The WD Scorpio Blue 640 GB is the highest capacity 2.5-inch hard drive available today in the industry-standard 9.5 mm, 2-disk form factor.

The new WD Scorpio Blue 640 GB drive has a 30 percent reduction in overall power consumption from the previous generation WD Scorpio Blue drive to achieve best-in-class power and performance1, making it an ideal solution for notebook computers and other portable devices that require extended battery life and cool, quiet operation.

WD today announced that it is now shipping desktop 7200 RPM 2 TB hard drives and is qualifying with OEMs enterprise-class hard drives based on WD's 500 gigabytes-per-platter technology. The popular family of WD Caviar Black drives, now led by the new 2 TB capacity, is perfect for gaming, high-performance desktop systems and workstations; while the WD RE4 2 TB is suited for servers, network attached storage and storage networks.

High-performance hard drives by an industry leader in performance, WD Caviar Black and WD RE4 2 TB drives combine 7200 RPM spin speed, 64 MB cache, dual stage actuator technology, SATA 3 gigabits per second (Gb/s) interface, and an integrated dual processor to deliver ultimate performance in a maximum-capacity drive.

TDK Japan, a supplier of read-write heads for hard-drive manufacturers predicts that 2.5 hard drives will be a reality by late 2009, and will reach markets by early 2010. The company presented a roadmap to the press late last week, that shows that it will have the technology available to produce 3.5 inch disk platters with 640 GB data density. Four such platters will go into making 2.5 TB drives. On the 2.5 inch drive front, the roadmap shows a jump to 320 GB per platter density, which allows 640GB 2-platter SFF drives to be announced by manufacturers towards the end of this year.

Hard Drive manufacturers had reached the 2 TB milestone earlier this year. Seagate and Western Digital used four 500 GB platters in their products. At this rate of data density increases, a 5 TB hard drive in 2010, as predicted by Hitachi's Yoshihiro Shiroishi last year, sounds a little more realistic.

WD today announced two new mobile hard drives that reach new capacity extremes. The highlight is a one terabyte model - the industry's highest-capacity 2.5-inch drive available. Industry-leading 333 GB-per-platter technology enables the new WD Scorpio Blue SATA 2.5-inch hard drives to offer mobile storage device and notebook users an enormous 1 TB capacity. A 750 GB WD Scorpio Blue model also will be available.

The WD Scorpio Blue 750 GB and 1 TB hard drives have a 12.5 mm form factor and are ideally suited for use in portable storage solutions, such as the newly released My Passport Essential SE Portable USB Drives. Other applications include select notebooks and small form factor desktop PCs, where quiet and cool operation are important. Both WD Scorpio Blue drives deliver high-performance with a 3 gigabits per second (Gb/s) transfer rate.

Western Digital, the world's leader in external storage solutions, today introduced its newly redesigned My Book World Edition II dual-drive network storage system in capacities of up to 4 TB. With the double protection of two Mirrored (RAID 1) drives and continuous backup software, the My Book World Edition II network storage system provides an extra-safe place for users to back up and store the data and digital media from all the computers on their network in one central location. Available now at select retailers and the WD online store, the new dual-drive systems join the recently introduced (Feb. 2009) My Book World Edition and are compatible with PC and Mac computers.

According to a July 2008 report by research firm Parks Associates, the number of households worldwide with data networks will grow from around 170 million in 2008 to 240 million by year-end 2012. The firm also reports that the average broadband household will see its digital media storage needs grow to nearly 900 GB by year-end 2012. In addition, consumers indicate that the most important feature for a network-attached storage (NAS) device is the amount of available storage. With its massive 4 TB capacity, the My Book World Edition II network storage system will serve this rapidly growing need for home data storage.

Western Digital is adding another high-capacity hard drive to its ranks. This time, the company it looking to expand its Caviar Black series of performance desktop hard drives, with the RE4-GP (WD2002FYPS). This 2 Terabyte drive boasts of a large 64 MB of cache, and two controllers on board to up the performance. It spins at 7200 rpm, and uses the standard SATA II interface. With four platters inside it, the drive weighs in at 0.73 kg. Ahead of its global launch, the drive seems to have already made it to stores in Japan, where unit packs of the drive are decking up shelves. When released in the west, these drives could go for around US $300 a piece.

Western Digital today announced that it has agreed to sell the assets of its media substrate manufacturing facility in Sarawak, Malaysia, to a subsidiary of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, the hard drive manufacturing unit of Hitachi, Ltd. The employees of WD at the facility will become employees of the purchaser. The transaction is expected to close in the current quarter, subject to customary closing conditions. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
WD announced in December that it was taking actions to realign its cost structure to match a softer demand environment. This divestiture is one of those steps. The Sarawak facility, at which WD manufactured aluminum substrates for hard drive magnetic media, was acquired by WD as part of its acquisition of Komag, Inc. in September 2007. WD is consolidating substrate operations from the Sarawak facility into its other substrate facility in Johor, Malaysia. WD will continue to manufacture the majority of its magnetic media requirements at existing facilities in Malaysia and source the balance of its media needs through its strategic external partners.

Western Digital Corp. today reported revenue of $1.6 billion, on shipments of approximately 31.6 million units and net income of $50 million, or $0.22 per share, for its fiscal third quarter ended Mar. 27, 2009. The company's results include charges of $14 million for in-process research and development related to the SiliconSystems, Inc. acquisition and $4 million associated with the restructuring plan announced Dec. 17, 2008. Excluding these charges, non-GAAP net income was $68 million or $0.30 per share. In the year-ago quarter, the company reported revenue of $2.1 billion, unit shipments of 34.5 million and net income of $280 million, or $1.23 per share.
The company generated $355 million in cash from operations during the March quarter, ending with total cash and cash equivalents of $1.6 billion.

Western Digital Corp. today expanded its enterprise family of hard drives to include the next-generation 2 TB capacity, the largest and only 2 TB enterprise-class hard drive shipping today. Combining industry-leading 64 MB cache, dual processors, and increased areal density, WD RE4-GP hard drives yield twice the processing power resulting in as much as 25 percent performance improvement over the previous generation.
WD's GreenPower technology platform is the first 3.5-inch hard drive platform designed with power savings as the primary attribute. These drives reduce average drive power consumption by up to 50 percent over currently available competitors' drives and are ultra-cool and quiet, all while delivering solid performance.

Western Digital Corp., a world leader in hard drive storage for computing and consumer electronics applications, today announced that it has completed a $65 million cash acquisition of SiliconSystems, Inc., Aliso Viejo, Calif., a leading supplier of solid-state drives for the embedded systems market.

Since its inception in 2002, SiliconSystems has sold millions of SiliconDrive products to meet the high performance, high reliability and multi-year product lifecycle demands of the network-communications, industrial, embedded-computing, medical, military and aerospace markets. These markets accounted for approximately one third of worldwide solid-state drive revenues in 2008. SiliconSystems' product portfolio includes solid-state drives with SATA, EIDE, PC Card, USB and CF interfaces in 2.5-inch, 1.8-inch, CF and other form factors. SiliconSystems has developed extensive intellectual property to address the stringent embedded systems market requirements to ensure data integrity, eliminate unscheduled downtime, protect application data and software and provide for data security and protection through its patented and patent-pending PowerArmor, SiSMART, SolidStor and SiSecure technologies.

WD, the world's leader in external storage solutions, today expanded its My Book family of external hard drives to include a 2 TB capacity, the largest available capacity in a single-drive system. With its wide variety of models, WD offers a solution for every type of user, whether they're a creative power user on a Mac or a home user on a PC. The new 2 TB My Book family includes: My Book Studio Edition, My Book Mac Edition, My Book Home Edition and My Book Essential Edition models.

Market research shows that consumer creation and acquisition of digital media is growing rapidly, driving demand for increasing storage capacities. According to market research firm IDC, the number of digital cameras and camera phones in the world surpassed 1 billion (Mar. 2008). Separately, market research firm GfK reports that HD (high definition) video camcorders are experiencing record growth and now account for 42 percent of total camcorder sales (Aug. 2008). HD video requires massive amounts of drive space: at least 8 GB per hour of video. Since 2006, when Apple began offering movie downloads, the Apple store has already sold more than 250 million TV episodes and sold or rented more than 33 million movies (Apple, Mar. 2009).

QNAP Systems, Inc. is pleased to announce Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB (WD20EADS) SATA hard drive is now supported by the entire TS-109/ 209/ 409/ 509/ 439/ 639/ 809 /809U-RP and the latest TS-119/ 219 Turbo NAS series.

'The latest 2TB Caviar Green hard drives from Western Digital consume up to 70% less power than two 1TB hard drives and are relatively quiet in operation. These hard drives are ideal for customers requiring higher capacities and the right balance of energy conservation and ensured reliability. The maximum capacity can be extended up to a total of 16TB now on a TS-809 or 809U-RP' says Andy Chuo, Product Manager from QNAP. The complete HDD compatibility list is available here.

Western Digital (WD), seems to have matched rival Seagate's per-platter storage density mark, with its 500GB platter technology. What's more, WD is planning to release a quad-platter hard drive totaling two terabytes of unformatted capacity before Seagate could achieve that feat with its Barracuda 7200.12 series. Seagate was the first to come out with a 1.5TB hard drive with four 375GB platters.

The 2TB hard drive by WD (model: WD20EADS) lists under the company's Caviar Green series. It makes use of a 32 MB cache. Its access time is rated at 8.9ms, though its spindle speed is variable, between 5400 and 7200 rpm. The variable speed brings in power savings. It uses the standard SATA II interface. European online retailer Czech Computer started listing the drive, though its price isn't announced just as yet.

Without any official release from Western Digital, a new product of theirs has emerged on Best Buy called the WD TV HD Media Player. It is a very small device not much bigger than the remote it comes with, but what is unique about this gadget is that it allows you to plug in a USB flash drive or USB hard disk drive (HDD), and play full 1080p high definition videos, pictures and music, on to your TV. It supports two USB2.0 devices simultaneously, measuring only 1.6x4.9x3.9 inches and weighing a mere 10.7 oz, it could be the answer for many people instead of having HTPC's or trailing cables from their main PC's. The RRP of the device appears to be $129.99, however it is currently on sale at Best Buy for $99.99.

WD today added a high-speed FireWire 800 interface to its popular My Passport Studio portable drive to give Mac computer users and creative professionals the fast performance they need. The new interface also makes this drive a perfect storage companion for the newly introduced Apple MacBook Pro computer. With FireWire 800/400 and USB interfaces, the new My Passport Studio portable drives offer up to 500 GB of storage capacity, are formatted for Mac computers and weigh less than 7 ounces.

As the enterprise market for highly reliable, high-capacity storage continues to grow, WD today added 750 GB and 1 TB WD RE3 SATA hard drives to its successful family of WD RE hard drives. Perfect for demanding server and storage application environments, WD's RE3 750 GB and 1 TB high-capacity enterprise SATA hard drives combine 32 MB cache, enhanced vibration and shock tolerance, and deploy new electronics to increase performance approximately 20 percent and by as much 60 percent in high-vibration environments. WD RE3 enterprise hard drives also include improved reliability features that help protect the drive and the data stored on it, and run cooler and quieter than previous generation enterprise drives.