Western Digital today introduced its newest generation of My Passport portable hard drives specifically designed for use with Mac computers and Apple Time Machine, featuring compact, elegant Mac-inspired designs with high capacity storage options and exceptional security for today's active lifestyles.

My Passport Studio boasts the all-metal design and performance needed for today's discerning Mac user, serving as an ideal companion for the on-the-go photographer, videographer, graphic artist, or creative professional that produces, shares and consumes massive amounts of digital content daily. Offering up to 1 TB capacity, the My Passport Studio also provides multiple connectivity options with two FireWire 800 ports and a USB 2.0 interface.

Western Digital, a leader in the desktop, mobile, high-capacity enterprise and consumer markets for hard drives, today announced that it has commenced volume shipments of its WD Scorpio Blue 9.5 mm, 2.5-inch mobile hard drive with 1 TB capacity. Designed for mainstream notebook computers, the new WD Scorpio Blue 1 TB hard drive utilizes 500 GB-per-platter areal density and is now available in the highest capacity for 2.5-inch hard drives in the industry-standard 9.5 mm, two-platter (2-disk) form factor.

WD Scorpio Blue mobile hard drives are designed with ruggedness, reliability and data-protection features that actively watch over valuable data. The WD Scorpio Blue 1 TB mobile hard drive also achieves excellent power and performance, making it an ideal solution for notebook computers and other portable devices that require extended battery life and cool, ultra quiet operation.

Western Digital today announced that its newest generation of the popular My Book Studio external hard drives are designed for use with Mac computers and Apple Time Machine. Now available with a 3 TB storage capacity, the new design features a brushed aluminum casing to match the appearance of a Mac computer, and also serves to keep the drive cool while in use. The aluminum exterior, combined with its WD Caviar Green drives, eliminates the need for an internal fan to reduce drive noise and extend the life of the drive. Although formatted for Mac computers, the My Book Studio external hard drives can also be reformatted for PCs.

The My Book Studio external hard drive includes all the features and benefits that have made it one of the favorites among creative professionals and Mac computer enthusiasts, including its fast and flexible FireWire 800/400 and USB 2.0 interfaces, user-controlled automatic backup software and drive management, password protection and hardware encryption. Shipping in capacities of 1 TB, 2 TB and 3 TB, the My Book Studio drive includes the WD Caviar Green series of internal hard drives with WD GreenPower Technology.

Western Digital, a leader in the desktop, mobile, high-capacity enterprise and consumer markets for hard drives, today announced the addition of 2.5 TB and 3 TB versions to its family of WD AV-GP SATA hard drives, serving the audio-video (AV) market. Shipping immediately, the 2.5 TB and 3 TB capacity, 3.5-inch, WD AV-GP hard drives offer 24X7 reliability, low power consumption and unrivalled storage capacity for storage-intensive AV applications such as digital video recorders, video surveillance, single-drive media servers and external multimedia storage.

"Designed to go the distance in high-temperature, always-on streaming digital AV environments, WD AV-GP drives store more hi-def audio and video than ever before with our new 2.5 TB and 3 TB versions," said Jim Welsh, executive vice president and general manager of WD's branded products and CE business units. "Combine unsurpassed capacity, power-saving WD GreenPower Technology, and performance capabilities to capture up to 12 simultaneous HD video streams with SilkStream technology and the drive choice is made clear in optimizing AV applications like PVR/DVR, IPTV and video surveillance."

Western Digital Corp. (NYSE: WDC) today reported revenue of $2.25 billion, hard-drive unit shipments of 50 million and net income of $146 million, or $0.62 per share, for its third fiscal quarter ended Apr. 1, 2011. The company's results include expenses of $10 million associated with the planned acquisition of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies announced Mar. 7, 2011. Excluding the acquisition-related expenses, non-GAAP net income was $156 million or $0.66 per share.

In the year-ago quarter, the company reported revenue of $2.64 billion, shipped 51 million hard drives, and reported net income and earnings per share of $400 million and $1.71, respectively. The company generated $313 million in cash from operations during the March quarter, ending with total cash and cash equivalents of $3.2 billion.

Over a week after, and still reeling with one of the biggest disasters in its history, Japan is home to major manufacturing plants of hard drive-grade substrate makers such as Furukawa Denko and Kobe Steel; as well as HDD OEM Showa Denko, all of which have faced temporary shutdowns after the quake. The three have all reported damage to facilities, injuries of employees and have shut down their operations pending further evaluation. This could have its repercussions on the hard drive industry, which is beginning to face serious competition from the solid-state drive (SSD) industry, in the lower-mainstream segments.

Showa Denko-made HDDs amount for 25% of global market, but its facilities are distributed between Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore. Showa Denko supplies to Seagate and Western Digital, two major companies in the HDD business, though since the two have their own manufacturing facilities, shortage of Showa Denko-sourced hard drives may not have an immediate impact, notes DigiTimes. On the other hand is HDD component manufacturers such as Furukawa Denko and Kobe Steel, which produce HDD-use substrates using aluminum mainly for desktop PCs; TDK, Showa Denko and Fuji Electric, which make fine components such as read/write heads and the magnetic discs.

Western Digital, the world's leader in external storage solutions, today introduced its My Book Studio Edition II dual-drive storage system with a massive 6 terabytes (TB) of storage to meet the capacity needs of today's creative pros and Mac enthusiasts who create, store, edit and archive large HD video and photo files. The new capacity provides users 33 percent more storage than the previous capacity, while maintaining the same footprint.

Combining its extended 6 TB storage capacity and compatibility with Apple Time Machine, the new My Book Studio Edition II drive becomes an instant storage solution for a variety of professions including art and design, photography, legal and medical, and a host of other small businesses.

Western Digital and Hitachi, Ltd. announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement whereby WD will acquire Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., in a cash and stock transaction valued at approximately $4.3 billion. The proposed combination will result in a customer-focused storage company, with significant operating scale, strong global talent and the industry's broadest product lineup backed by a rich technology portfolio.

Under the terms of the agreement, WD will acquire Hitachi GST for $3.5 billion in cash and 25 million WD common shares valued at $750 million, based on a WD closing stock price of $30.01 as of March 4, 2011. Hitachi, Ltd. will own approximately ten percent of Western Digital shares outstanding after issuance of the shares and two representatives of Hitachi will be added to the WD board of directors at closing. The transaction has been approved by the board of directors of each company and is expected to close during the third calendar quarter of 2011, subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals. WD plans to fund the transaction with a combination of existing cash and total debt of approximately $2.5 billion.

Intel Corporation today announced the availability of Thunderbolt technology, a new high-speed PC connection technology that brings together high-speed data transfer and high-definition (HD) display on to a single cable. Running at 10 Gbps, Thunderbolt technology can transfer a full-length HD movie in less than 30 seconds. This Intel-developed technology is coming to market through a technical collaboration with Apple, and is available first on Apple's new line of MacBook Pro laptop computers.

The vision for Thunderbolt technology (formerly codenamed "Light Peak") is to move media faster, simplify connections between devices, and foster new and exciting ways to build and use PCs. Combining high-speed data and HD video connections together onto a single cable is instrumental to achieving that vision. Thunderbolt technology delivers this via two communications methods, or protocols -- PCI Express for data transfer and DisplayPort for displays.

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.