Western Digital continues leadership role with first shipment 1.6 GB, 3.5-inch enhanced IDE drive; 5200 rpm performance leader featured in new AT&T, Dell and Gateway 2000 systems.

IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 1, 1995--Western Digital Corp. (NYSE:WDC) Monday announced that the company is now delivering its new Caviar AC31600 (1.6 GB) 3-platter, 3.5-inch drive, the highest performance Enhanced IDE drive available on the market.

Designed to provide the capacity and performance necessary for today's new Pentium PCs and aftermarket upgrades, the Caviar AC31600 offers high-speed data transfer rates of up to 16.6MB/s. The Caviar AC31600 drives will be featured in new systems from AT&T Global Information Solutions, Dell Corp. and Gateway 2000 Inc.

Western Digital's Caviar drives incorporate all the advanced features necessary to provide today's discerning desktop users with the high level of performance and capacity needed for new multitasking operating systems, multimedia, Internet and other on-line services.

The growing popularity of these applications require storage manufacturers to pay particular attention to the requirements for faster speed and throughput, increased capacities, as well as faster and uninterrupted data transfer.

"AT&T is pleased to offer this high-capacity, high-speed drive in our newest Globalyst PCs," said Rob Howe, vice president, worldwide PC marketing, AT&T Global Information Solutions. "The addition of Western Digital's drive to Globalyst PCs demonstrates AT&T's continuing commitment to offer high-performance computing solutions for our customers."

"Our customers are hungry for increased capacity and performance, so we are delighted to integrate the Caviar AC31600 into our product line," said Greg Weir, peripherals product marketing manager for Dell Computer Corp. "We think our customers will be impressed with the Caviar AC31600's speed and storage capacity."

"Western Digital's new Caviar AC31600 gives Gateway's P5-120 system a leading-edge value," said Rob Cheng, director of desktop products for Gateway 2000. "We appreciate Western Digital's ability to bring new technology to market very quickly so that we can immediately integrate the largest hard drives available into our PCs, providing our customers with increased storage capacity and improved performance."

The new 540 MB per platter Caviar drive is implemented with thin film heads and a new proprietary WD chipset. The WD chipset, Architecture III, increases bit densities through hard sectoring, improved format efficiencies and a PRML (Partial Response Maximum Likelihood) read channel. PRML increases areal density in order to allow more capacity per disk.

"Today's users continue to demand more performance," said John Burger, vice president for marketing for Western Digital's Personal Storage Group.

"The trend toward higher performance is evident everywhere, from the evolution of the 486 microprocessor to Pentium, the ISA to PCI bus, and the rapid transition of 2X to 4X CD-ROMs. The drive industry is no different, with demand for higher disk performance through increased areal density, faster rotations, and higher data transfer speeds."

By aggressively introducing new technologies while leveraging the common architecture strategy based on a common proprietary Western Digital chipset, Western Digital continues its 3-year history of leading time to market product introductions. This single platform approach provides the company with the highest level of flexibility and ease of qualification in the industry.

This innovative design philosophy has enabled Western Digital to achieve substantially improved yields, rapid cost reductions, higher productivity, and asset management leadership.

The Caviar AC31600 enables the maximum disk performance under local bus environments through the use of 16.6 MB/s Mode 4 PIO (programmed input/output) and 16.6 MB/s Mode 2 multi-word DMA (direct memory access).

The introduction of the local bus brought in a high-speed, 32-bit wide data path for the disk system. The new Enhanced IDE specification added PIO Modes 3 and 4 and DMA Modes 1 and 2, which boost overall host data transfer rates to between 11.1 and 16.6 MB/sec.

The Caviar AC31600 offers a rotational speed of 5200 RPM and includes CacheFlow4 for advanced, adaptive read and write caching capabilities to complement the advanced caching capabilities of today's major operating systems. The drive has an average read seek time of sub-10ms and spindle latency of 5.76 ms to provide fast mechanical access to both cached and uncached data.

"This is the first drive designed to take full advantage of the higher transfer rates achievable with Mode 4 PIO," said Burger. "The 5200 RPM capability, combined with the other advanced features of the Caviar AC31600, allow users to expect up to a 50 percent improvement in real-time applications."

Western Digital was the first to implement a 3-year warranty for PC drives, carried on all Caviar drives. The Caviar family of drives are extensively tested in the company's FIT Lab (Functional Integrity Test Lab) to ensure compatibility with AT-compatible computers and standard operating systems.

Caviar drives offer guaranteed compatibility and a Mean Time to Failure rate of 300,000 hours.

Suggested retail pricing for the Caviar AC31600 drive is $699.00, OEM evaluation unit pricing is $495.

With headquarters in Irvine, Western Digital is a recognized leader in the design and manufacture of hard disk drives, integrated circuits, and graphics controller board-level products. The company markets these products to leading systems manufacturers and selected resellers under the Western Digital, Caviar, Paradise and RocketCHIP brand names.

Western Digital is the first Fortune 500 company to have been awarded company-wide ISO 9001 registration, linking all WD organizations with a consistent global standard for quality processes. The company was founded in 1970 and has long been noted for its storage and graphics controller expertise and end-market systems-level design knowledge. -0-

NOTE TO EDITORS: Western Digital, Caviar and Paradise are registered trademarks of Western Digital Corp. RocketCHIP, CacheFlow4 and FIT Lab are trademarks of Western Digital Corp. All other marks mentioned herein belong to other companies.

CONTACT: Western Digital Corp.

Brenda Bennett, 206/712-0735