WD Expands Line of SAS Hard Drives for Enterprise Applications

Sydney, Australia: - March 31, 2011  –  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 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.

"Meeting the demands of our customers and IT professionals in the enterprise market is the primary driver of our long-term commitment to SAS drives," said Darwin Kauffman, WD's vice president of enterprise storage solutions. "Our focused strategy in the enterprise continues to ensure that customers who have rewarded WD with their preference of WD drives in other application segments receive the same outstanding values of quality, reliability, performance and availability with WD's SAS drives. It is with that commitment that we are now able to meet a wider set of customer requirements."

"Over the past three years, SAS has established itself as the preferred interface for HDDs in servers and enterprise storage systems, representing more than 50 percent of all HDDs shipped for enterprise applications in 2010," said John Rydning, research director, hard disk drives at IDC. "The performance, scalability, and reliability of SAS will result in more than two-thirds of HDDs shipping with a SAS interface for enterprise applications by 2014."

WD's latest product offering provides a full spectrum of SAS drives to fit specific enterprise needs. The WD S25 family of drives delivers high performance with its 6 Gb/s SAS interface and is fit for use in a broad range of mission-critical applications including dense server and storage systems. WD RE SAS hard drives are engineered to offer data-hungry SAS-based storage systems the massive capacity they need without compromising top-of-the-line performance. This uncompromising combination of high-capacity, peak performance and best-in-class reliability make WD RE SAS drives ideal for business critical applications. More information about WD S25 SAS hard drives may be found on the company's website at http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=10 and information about WD RE SAS hard drives can be found at http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=580.

Pricing and Availability
Manufacturer: Western Digital
Product Name: WD S25 SAS Hard Drives
WD6000BKHG RRP: A$459 / NZ$559
Australia Distributors: Achieva Australia, Synnex Australia
New Zealand Distributors: Ingram Micro NZ, Synnex NZ, VST
Website:  www.westerndigital.com  
Warranty: 5-year limited warranty
Availability: Now      

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 designs and produces reliable, high-performance hard drives and solid state drives that keep users' data accessible and secure from loss. Its advanced technologies are configured into applications for client and enterprise computing, embedded systems and consumer electronics, as well as its own consumer storage products.

WD was founded in 1970. The company's storage products are marketed to leading OEMs, 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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