WD(R) Ships Second-Generation Green(TM) Hard Drives With Significantly Improved Power Efficiency and Performance

WD's Best Selling Eco-friendly WD Caviar(R) Green Drive Continues to be the Most Power-Efficient, Coolest and Quietest 3.5-inch Hard Drive in the Market

LAKE FOREST, Calif., Oct. 1 -- WD (NYSE:WDC) today announced the second-generation of its highly popular and environmentally friendly WD(R) Caviar(R) Green(TM) desktop hard drives, which feature the company's GreenPower(TM) technology to significantly reduce power consumption, compared with standard hard drives. The new platform is based on WD's 333 GB/platter technology with 32 MB cache, producing capacities ranging from 500 GB to 1 TB.(1)

As an innovative leader in green storage technology, WD has ramped up its successful GreenPower technology-based hard drives to greater than 10 percent of its 3.5-inch hard drive shipments in the initial twelve months of production, making low-power technologies one of WD's fastest growing segments and WD Caviar Green one of the most successful new products in the company's recent history.

WD's latest WD Caviar Green hard drives consume up to 20 percent less power and offer a 10 percent increase in performance over the previous version(2), while continuing to provide the market with hard drives enabling quieter and cooler-running desktop PCs and external storage devices.

"WD's first-to-market offering of green technology has generated positive customer experience, while lessening the burden on our natural resources," said Don Bennett, vice president and general manager of WD's desktop business unit. "Compared with competitive drives, customers realize a reduction in power consumption, leading to less heat generation, which enables greater long-term reliability in all applications."

  Cool, Quiet Hard Drives
  The following technologies enable WD Caviar Green hard drives:

     IntelliPower(TM) - A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate
     and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power
     savings and solid performance. Additionally, GreenPower drives consume
     less current during startup allowing lower peak loads on systems as
     they are booted.

     IntelliSeek(TM) - Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power
     consumption, noise, and vibration.

     NoTouch(TM) ramp load technology - Designed to ensure the recording
     head never touches the disk media resulting in significantly less wear
     to the recording head and media, as well as better drive protection in
     transit.


  Availability and Pricing

All WD Caviar Green hard drives may be ordered through select distributors and resellers. MSRP for the WD Caviar Green 1 TB hard drives (model WD10EADS) is $219.00 USD. More information about WD Caviar Green desktop drives may be found on the company's Web site at http://wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=559

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(R) 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.

Western Digital, WD, the WD logo and WD Caviar are registered trademarks and Green, IntelliPower, IntelliSeek, NoTouch and GreenPower are trademarks of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. 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.

  (1) The 32 MB cache is only available on the WD Caviar Green 1 TB model
      (WD10EADS)

  (2) Based on previous generation WD Caviar Green 1 TB hard drives.

  (Logo:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20000711/WDCLOGO)