WD Shipping Its First 3.5-Inch HDD at 320GB Per Platter

WD is now shipping in volume its WD Caviar family of
3.5-inch hard drives based on 320 GB-per-platter technology, the same
industry-leading storage areal density that the company has been shipping in
its 160 GB-per-platter (320 GB capacity) 2.5-inch WD Scorpio drives since
October 2007.

"Our technology investments and product roadmap execution have resulted in
WD shipping the industry’s highest areal densities in the industry’s two
highest volume markets," said Hossein Moghadam, chief technology officer of
WD. "Our 250 gigabits-per-square-inch technology already has been reliably
serving our 2.5-inch customers, and now it will benefit customers in the 3.5
inch desktop and other product areas."

An initial WD Caviar capacity point of 320 GB is available immediately.
The 320 GB-per-platter technology will be deployed across WD’s desktop,
enterprise, CE and external hard drive product lines, including additional
capacity points, throughout this calendar year.

The WD Caviar family of 3.5-inch desktop hard drives delivers high
performance with 300 MB/s transfer rate, cache sizes up to 16 MB, Native
Command Queuing (NCQ), and cool operating temperatures and quiet operation,
enabling customers to integrate WD products in the most demanding desktop and
external storage environments.

WD