WD Ae Cold-Data-Storage HDD Introduced

Progressive-Capacity, Energy-Efficient WD Ae Drives Enable Archive Tier of Storage Optimized for Web-scale, Cold-data Infrastructures

Moscone Center (IDF Booth #363),  WD®, a Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) company and world leader in storage deployed for modern datacenters, today announced its innovative WD Ae™ line of hard drives designed for the unique operating characteristics of the emerging archive tier within web-scale datacenters. Built on a platform to achieve optimal total cost of ownership (TCO), WD Ae hard drives utilize the lowest possible power consumption and a Progressive Capacity™ model to enable a new tier of storage for large-scale cloud infrastructures.

“Modern datacenter customers came to us with a need for an HDD solution designed specifically for ever-expanding cold-data repositories,” said Matt Rutledge, senior vice president and general manager, storage technology, WD. “Now in our third generation with over 700 petabytes deployed, WD is bringing the WD Ae drive to the broader market, representing another vital component of WD’s capacity storage portfolio, which delivers features and product attributes optimized for the rapidly evolving storage market.”

The expanding scale of data creation and the corresponding need to retain, preserve and extract value from that data creates a new and unique challenge for large-scale datacenter entities.  Reliable, long-term data management for massive-scale data storage is becoming ever more critical.  The conventional tools and technologies for cost-effective storage are not effective in massive-scale datacenters, so entirely new approaches to storage architectures and associated component technology are emerging.

“Cloud service providers have rapidly growing volumes of generally inactive data to store and manage, while at the same providing customers with access to the data at almost any time,” according to John Rydning, IDC’s vice president for hard disk drive research.  “WD’s new WD Ae line of HDDs is aimed directly at these storage use cases, and is helping to define a new, active archive enterprise storage sub-segment, thus opening new HDD storage opportunities for the HDD industry.”

Focusing on the unique attributes of cold data, WD has led the cold/archive market with multiple generations of archive storage, actively evolving a product formula to deliver the optimal combination of cost-effectiveness, power efficiency, storage density and application intensity. WD Ae drives are purpose-built archive HDDs with extreme areal density on a high volume mechanical platform that offers increased power efficiency and a Progressive Capacity model.

Part of the unique attributes of the WD Ae hard drive family includes: a dense five-platter platform, which renders an optimal mix of power, performance, capacity and cost; capacities greater than 6 TB; SATA 6 Gb/s interface; and a workload and reliability rating of 60 TB/yr workload and 500 Khrs Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF).

WD Ae Progressive Capacity

As technology and manufacturing processes mature over time, incremental capacity increases are realized. WD’s innovative Progressive Capacity model allows distribution of these incrementally higher capacity models to take advantage of their fullest available capacity: 6.1 TB, 6.2 TB, or 6.3 TB, for instance. These more granular capacity increments result in far greater capacity attainment through the life of a product platform. At the massive scale of modern applications, the availability of incremental capacity each quarter renders exceptional value to datacenters who can realize improvements in capacity-per-drive, capacity-per-volumetric space and reduced infrastructure overhead.

Hot vs. Cold Data Storage – the Data Storage Temperature Continuum

While approximately 20-30 percent of data on most networks is active, commonly referred to as “hot,” the majority of data, 70-80 percent is inactive or “cold,” meaning it is unchanging and infrequently accessed. Given the challenges of storing petabyte- or exabyte-scale data, public cloud and private cloud ecosystems are focused on creating entirely new tiers of storage to deal with the varying degrees of “data temperature.” The cold data tier is emerging in a manner very similar to the way the “Tier 0” emerged over the past decade to deal with critical performance requirements.  Now the industry is adding a new tier on the opposite end of the data temperature spectrum, often referred to as “Tier 3” storage.

Cold storage is the practice of creating a new tier of important information not frequently accessed for long periods of time, and can include structured, unstructured, or semi-structured data that has timeless value, and of which the exact schedule of retrieval is uncertain. As a result, data retrieval times can be relaxed, compared to the speed at which hot data needs be retrieved.

Ultimately, with purpose-built and cost-optimized cold data storage infrastructure and devices, IT departments can deliver vastly improved time-to-archive and time-to-retrieve cold/archive data that outstrips capabilities of monolithic tape libraries, while utilizing standard hard-drive based storage solutions that are abundantly used and understood to realize optimal application value and significant storage cost savings.

Availability

WD Ae hard drives will be sold in box quantities of 20 and available to select distributors and integrators starting late 2014. WD Ae drives are covered by a three-year limited warranty. More information about WD’s Ae datacenter hard drives can be found on the company website at http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1340. WD Ae hard drives will also be showcased in several key partner booths (Supermicro – booth # 700) at the Intel Developer’s Forum (IDF) at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, Calif.

About WD

WD, a Western Digital company, is a long-time innovator and storage industry leader. As a storage technology pacesetter, the company produces reliable, high-performance hard disk drives and solid state drives. These drives are deployed by OEMs and integrators in desktop and mobile computers, enterprise computing systems, embedded systems and consumer electronics applications, as well as by the company in providing its own storage products. WD’s leading storage devices and systems, networking products, media players and software solutions empower people around the world to easily save, store, protect, share and experience their content on multiple devices. WD was established in 1970 and is headquartered in Irvine, California. For more information, please visit the company’s website at www.wd.com.

Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC), Irvine, Calif., is a global provider of products and services that empower people to create, manage, experience and preserve digital content. Its companies design and manufacture storage devices, networking equipment and home entertainment products under the WD, HGST and G-Technology brands. Visit the Investor section of the company’s website (www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of financial and investor information.

This news release contains forward-looking statements, including statements about (i) the rapidly evolving datacenter storage market, (ii) the success of the WD Ae drives to meet the needs of expanding cold data repositories, (iii) WD’s continued innovation in this category, and (iv) the availability of WD Ae drives to select distributors and integrators in late 2014. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements, including the possibility that competing technologies may be developed or brought to market before the availability of the WD Ae drives in late 2014; the possibility that competing technologies more successfully meet the needs of customers or are more widely accepted; the failure to accurately anticipate customers’ changing needs and emerging technological trends; the failure by WD or its suppliers to develop and manufacture components, technology or production equipment for the WD Ae drives to meet the estimated availability date or at all; the success of such technologies and or other risks detailed from time-to-time in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings and reports, including, but not limited to, our most recent annual report on Form 10-K to which your attention is directed. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak as of the date hereof, and WD undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.

Western Digital, WD, and the WD logo are registered trademarks of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. in the U.S. in the U.S. and other countries. WD Ae and Progressive Capacity is a trademark of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Other marks may be mentioned herein that belong to other companies. Pictures shown may vary from actual products. Not all products may be available in all regions of the world.