Western Digital has announced that it is increasing the capacity of its enterprise-class WD Caviar RE hard drives by nearly 30 per cent, providing a cost-effective solution for dependable, high-capacity enterprise storage.
WD Caviar RE drives, which are available in capacities up to 320 GB, rotate at 7,200 RPM and are equipped with either Serial ATA (SATA) or EIDE interfaces.
"Being a leader in the hard drive industry, Western Digital realizes the need for constant innovation in order to deliver the high quality and reliability that customers expect from us. The immediate and positive response that followed the launch of WD Caviar RE drives inspired us to enhance the drive further, in order to deliver a high-capacity hard drive well-suited for RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) server applications," Hafeez Khawaja, WD’s Senior Regional Director, Middle East, Africa, South Asia, said.
"Until now, IT professionals in need of affordable, high-capacity and reliable storage have been utilizing desktop-class drives in demanding multi-user environments - an application for which desktop hard drives are not designed. Addressing this customer need, WD optimized its high-capacity 7,200 RPM drives with technology that significantly increases reliability and multi-drive-system compatibility," Khawaja added.
A unique feature of WD Caviar RE drives is Time Limited Error Recovery (TLER), which helps prevent drive fallout caused by standard extended desktop hard drive error-recovery processes. Prior to WD's development of TLER, hard drive fallout when using desktop drives in RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) applications was a common experience among systems integrators and storage manufacturers. By addressing the differences between single-user and multi-user workloads, WD Caviar RE drives implement RAID-specific TLER, which improves drive compatibility with RAID controllers, resulting in markedly improved system reliability.
WD Caviar RE drives also feature one million hours MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure), offering systems builders and storage system manufacturers enhanced reliability in high-duty cycle applications, where continuous performance is essential.
The drives also come equipped with Data Lifeguard Tools - a software utility that works in conjunction with the embedded data lifeguard features such as shock protection, environmental protection system, and embedded error detection and repair features - to make hard drive installation, management and diagnostics simple and error-free. Moreover, WD Caviar RE drives' 8 MB cache provides a higher percentage of cache hits and significantly faster time to data than industry-standard 2 MB versions.
About Western Digital (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 (www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of financial and investor information.
