Legit Reviews

LAKE FOREST, Calif. Jan. 3, 2006 Western Digital Corp. (NYSE: WDC) today announced that it has doubled the capacity of its next-generation 10,000 RPM WD Raptor® enterprise Serial ATA (SATA) hard drive to 150 GB and has increased the performance of the popular drive with additional features for server and networked storage applications.

Enterprise storage system vendors are increasingly embracing SATA hard drives as a reliable and cost-effective choice for servers and storage systems. When WD originally introduced the WD Raptor its first SATA drive in 2003, approximately 14 percent of hard drives used in multi-user applications were SATA technology, according to Gartner. The market research firm expects that portion to grow to 19 percent in 2005 and 30 percent by 2009.

"WD continues to lead the industry with the broadest enterprise SATA lineup: WD Raptor delivers enterprise reliability and performance, and the company's RAID Edition drives WD Caviar® RE and WD Caviar® RE2 deliver enterprise capacity and reliability," said Tom McDorman, vice president and general manager of enterprise storage for WD. "Building on customer demand and market adoption for enterprise SATA drives, the 10,000 RPM WD Raptor delivers the greatest performance and reliability of all SATA hard drives available."

Performance and Reliability of SCSI at Significantly Less Cost The new, 150 GB WD Raptor maintains its high performance in servers and networked storage, where rotational vibration from multiple spinning hard drives robs performance, with its RAFF(TM) (Rotary Accelerometer Feed Forward) technology. The next-generation drive also offers best-in-class random I/O performance with native command queuing (NCQ), which increases performance by intelligently ordering multiple simultaneous read and write commands, which is common in demanding, multi-user workloads such as servers. Sixteen MB cache furthers the drive's ability to serve and record data quickly for multiple users. The drive offers an average seek time of 4.6 milliseconds (ms).

The enterprise-class mechanical and electronics platform of WD Raptor is designed to meet the 24x7 demands of the enterprise environment. Continuing to be the world's most reliable SATA hard drive, WD Raptor is reliability-rated at 1.2 million hours MTBF (mean time between failure) in high duty cycle environments and is backed by a five-year warranty.

WD Raptor Availability and Pricing
WD Raptor 150 GB (model WD1500ADFD) hard drives are currently shipping in volume. Estimated retail pricing for WD Raptor is $299.99 USD. WD Raptor is available now on the company's online store (http://www.westerndigital.com), where customers can take advantage of free standard shipping.

Additional information about WD Raptor hard drives may be found on the company's Web site at http://www.westerndigital.com/products

About WD
WD, one of the storage industry's pioneers and long-time leaders, provides products and services for people and organizations that collect, manage and use digital information. The company's core business produces reliable, high-performance hard drives that keep users' data close-at-hand and secure from loss.

WD was founded in 1970. The company's storage products are marketed to leading systems manufacturers and selected resellers under the Western Digital and WD brand names. Visit the Investor section of the company's Web site (http://www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of financial and investor information.

This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements relating to the expected growth rate of hard drives using SATA technology in multi-user applications. The forward-looking statements are based on current management expectations, and actual results may differ materially as a result of several factors, including: pricing trends and fluctuations in average selling prices (ASPs); supply and demand conditions in the hard drive industry and business conditions generally; actions by competitors; changes in the availability and cost of specialized product components; changes in product and customer mix; uncertainties related to the development and introduction of products based on new technologies and successful expansion into new hard drive markets; and other risks and uncertainties listed in WD's recent SEC filings, including its Form 10-Q for the first fiscal quarter of fiscal 2006. WD undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect new information or events or for any other reason.