Western Digital is a data storage pioneer and a leader in the hard drive industry. The company provides cost-effective storage solutions for people and organizations that collect, manage and use digital information. Customers rely on WD hard drives in desktop and notebook computers, mobile and handheld devices, corporate networks and home entertainment applications. WD applies its storage expertise to consumer products for external, portable and shared storage applications.

The Market

Hard drives are highly sophisticated devices merging magnetic, mechanical and electronic technologies to store information at very high densities. Hard drive technology made possible the development of personal computers, movies-on-demand, digital video recorders (DVRs) and digital music jukeboxes, and has contributed significantly to the popularity of digital still and video cameras. Moreover, all the information on the Internet is stored on hard drives.

According to industry analysts, the $32 billion global hard drive industry, which shipped more than 500 million units in 2007, is expected to expand 14 percent on a compound annual growth rate between 2008 and 2012. WD participates in the large majority of available markets for hard drives and has an eye on those that it has yet to penetrate.

The Company

WD has proven its ability to respond to changing market needs by delivering to new markets the same quality, reliability and on-time delivery that has made it successful in the computing markets. WD is meeting new needs as the markets seek smaller, high-performance hard drives for a variety of computing and consumer electronics products.

Desktop computer users are served by a wide range of 3.5-inch WD hard drives. The popular WD Caviar family of drives, available in both EIDE and Serial ATA (SATA) interfaces, offers top performance, capacity, and cool and quiet operation for PC and Macintosh® computers. WD Caviar Black offers maximum performance for power computing; WD Caviar Green consumes as much as 40 percent less power than standard drives, providing cool, quiet and eco-friendly storage; and WD Caviar Blue is the series for those who want performance and reliability for everyday computing.

For notebook computing, the WD Scorpio family of 2.5-inch hard drives features high performance and low power consumption. The 7,200 RPM WD Scorpio Black drive delivers lightning-fast desktop-class performance, while the WD Scorpio Blue, offering the highest capacities, operates with low power consumption for longer system battery life and increased long-term reliability.

WD's enterprise storage offerings are led by WD VelociRaptor, the world's only 10,000-RPM SATA hard drives. WD VelociRaptor offers the performance and reliability of traditional enterprise SCSI hard drives at much less cost. The WD RE family of enterprise drives delivers very high capacities and meets the demanding 24x7 reliability requirements of enterprise applications. Together, WD VelociRaptor drives and the WD RE family offer high performance, reliability and capacity for network attached storage devices, storage area networks, workstations, RAID servers, medical imaging, gaming and video/broadcast applications.

Consumer electronics devices are home to high-capacity, quiet-operating, low-power-consuming, video-streaming WD AV drives. Users of DVRs want tremendous capacity for and seamless video streaming of their favorite TV shows and movies.

Both home and business users find applications for WD external hard drives and storage systems, which employ USB 2.0, FireWire® 400, FireWire 800, eSATA interfaces, or a combination, as well as Ethernet for network storage. With these drives, massive secured data storage is added quickly and easily. The My Book family delivers high-performance storage to PC and Macintosh computers, making them ideal for video, music and photo capture and editing, as well as for data backup. The pocket-sized My Passport Portable Drive offers the ultimate in storage convenience and portability.

Media enthusiasts can use WD TV to turn their My Passport Portable Drives into an HD media player, providing the most convenient way to play HD movies or user-generated videos, listen to high-quality digital music and show high-resolution slideshows of their family photos on their TV.

WD was founded in 1970 and began designing and manufacturing hard drives in 1988. Headquartered in Lake Forest, California, the company employs tens of thousands of people worldwide. Manufacturing facilities are in California, Malaysia and Thailand; design facilities are in Southern and Northern California, Colorado and Thailand; and sales offices are maintained around the world. The company’s storage products are marketed to leading systems manufacturers, select resellers and retailers under the Western Digital and WD brand names. WD’s common shares are listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol WDC. WD’s Web site may be found at www.westerndigital.com.

Western Digital, My Book and WD Caviar are registered trademarks, and My Passport, WD VelociRaptor, WD Passport, WD Scorpio, WD Caviar Black, WD Caviar Blue, WD Caviar Green, WD TV, WD Scorpio Black, WD Scorpio Blue and the WD logo are trademarks of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. All other brand and product names mentioned herein are the property of their respective companies.