WD® Ships 500GB Capacity Notebook Hard Drives

Company Expands Industry Leadership in Areal Density at 250 GB-Per-Platter For 2.5-inch Standard Form Factor Notebook Hard Drives

Sydney, Australia – September 29, 2008 - WD® today announced that it has commenced volume shipments and OEM qualification of its WD Scorpio Blue 2.5-inch notebook hard drives with capacities up to with 500 GB. Utilising industry leading 250 GB-per-platter technology, the new WD Scorpio® Blue™ 500 GB and 400 GB SATA hard drives are designed for notebook computers and portable storage devices.

WD Scorpio Blue delivers high-performance with a 3 Gb/s transfer rate, while including proprietary features that make the drive extraordinarily quiet, while running at cool operating temperatures. The WD Scorpio Blue 500 GB is the highest capacity 2.5-inch, standard form-factor (9.5mm) hard drive shipping-to-date, and is developed for use in OEM notebook platforms that offer the highest storage capacities to the market.

“WD continues to provide the mobile market with high-capacity storage everywhere consumers and business professional travel,” said Jim Morris, WD's vice president and general manager of notebook storage. “Notebook system manufacturers continue to improve performance, while adding data hungry features. The WD Scorpio Blue 400 GB and 500 GB hard drives provide the capacity needed to maximize the latest features and functions available in today’s notebook computers, while relying on WD’s exceptional reliability.”

The new WD Scorpio Blue drive further expands the company's range of 2.5-inch, 5400 RPM, mobile hard drive offerings to capacity points up to 500 GB.

WD Scorpio Blue Features
WhisperDrive™ - WD's exclusive WhisperDrive technology combines state-of-the-art seeking algorithms to yield WD Scorpio Blue hard drives as one of the quietest 5400 RPM, 2.5-inch drives available.
ShockGuard™ - Leading-edge ShockGuard technology combines firmware and hardware advancements to protect the drive mechanics and platter surface to meet the highest combined shock tolerance specifications required for mobile and notebook applications.
IntelliSeek™ - Another unique WD Scorpio Blue 500 GB feature is its IntelliSeek technology, which calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration. For a demonstration on IntelliSeek, visit the WD Web site at http://www.wdc.com/en/flash/index.asp?family=intelliseek

Product Summary
Manufacturer: Western Digital
Product Name: WD Scorpio Blue
RRP for 500 GB (model WD5000BEVT): AU $279 NZ$299
RRP for 400 GBa (model WD4000BEVT) : AU $239 NZ$265
Warranty: 3-year limited warranty
Website: http://www.westerndigital.com
Product link and Photos: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=506
Australian Distributors: Achieva, Synnex Australia, Today Tech, Westan
New Zealand Distributors: VST, Ingram Micro NZ, Synnex NZ

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 produces reliable, high-performance hard drives that keep users' data accessible and secure from loss. WD applies its storage expertise to consumer products for external, portable and shared storage applications.
WD was founded in 1970. The company's storage products are marketed to leading systems manufacturers, selected resellers and retailers under the Western Digital® and WD brand names. Visit the Investor section of the company's Web site (www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of financial and investor information.

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Western Digital, WD, WD logo and WD Scorpio are registered trademarks in the U.S. and other countries; IntelliSeek, ShockGuard and WhisperDrive are trademarks of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. All other trademarks herein are property of their respective owner. As used for storage capacity, one megabyte (MB) = one million bytes, one gigabyte (GB) = one billion bytes, and one terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment. As used for buffer or cache, one megabyte (MB) = 1,048,576 bytes.

PR CONTACT
Renato Catalan
Gap Marketing and Management Pty Ltd
Website: www.gapmarketing.com.au