Sydney, Australia – 8 May 2013 – WD^®, a Western Digital company and a world leader in storage, today announced a new 3.5-inch SAS hard drive solution for legacy datacenter storage systems with the release of a the WD XE^™, 2.5-inch, 10,000 RPM SAS hard drive, now available mounted in a 3.5-inch WD performance adapter. Shipping immediately, the WD XE hard drives provide best-in-class performance, low power consumption, and an easier upgrade path for existing 3.5-inch storage systems.

While demand for 3.5-inch, high-performance enterprise-class hard drives slows, a need remains for an alternate high-performance storage device as a transitional solution for legacy systems. WD XE hard drives offer best-in-class sequential performance and provide a compelling upgrade for datacenters migrating away from legacy drives nearing end-of-life.

“Delivering up to 50 percent higher capacity, similar or better maximum sequential performance, higher reliability and up to 67 percent lower power consumption versus 3.5-inch,15,000 RPM drives, the new WD XE drives are the answer for data center server and storage solutions needing  a transition strategy,” said Rich Rutledge, senior vice president of WD’s datacenters business unit. “IT managers now have a worry-free migration path to the latest enterprise performance drives from WD, while preserving their chassis and solution investments.”

WD XE 2.5-inch SAS hard drives in 3.5-inch performance adapters feature:

Highest performance in its class – WD XE delivers ultra-fast 6 Gb/s transfer rates, best-in-class sequential data rate of 204 MB/s, and outstanding random I/O performance;
Low power consumption – This 3.5-inch SAS drive delivers up to 67 percent lower power versus 3.5-inch 15,000 RPM drives, which can result in substantially lower total cost of ownership (TCO) while increasing capacity and reliability;
Form factor – 2.5-inch drive mounted in 3.5-inch performance adapter for ease of upgrade and ultra-cool operation;
Dual port, full duplex connectivity – Offers higher reliability, performance and data availability by eliminating single points of failure, designed for high-availability datacenter systems;
NoTouch^™ ramp load technology – The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit; and
Industry’s highest reliability rating – 2 million hours MTBF.

Pricing and Availability
Manufacturer: WD
Product Name: WD XE SAS Hard Drive in 3.5-inch performance adapters
Australian Distributors: Achieva AU and Synnex AU
New Zealand Distributors: Ingram Micro NZ, Synnex NZ and VST NZ
Availability: Now
Website: http://wd.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=10
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/wdaust
Warranty: Five-year limited warranty

MSRP:

Company Unveils First Client SSD, Next-Generation Enterprise SSDs, and PCIe Accelerator Card

CUPERTINO, Calif. — May 7, 2013 — Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ:STX), a worldwide leader in storage solutions, today announced its new portfolio of flash-memory solutions. The company took the wraps off its first client solid state drive (SSD) and its next-generation enterprise SSDs. Featuring the Seagate^® 600 SSD, Seagate^® 600 Pro SSD, and the Seagate^® 1200 SSD, the new line of drives are engineered to deliver ultra-fast speed and high data integrity. Rounding out the portfolio, Seagate also announced the new Seagate^® X8 Accelerator, a storage class memory PCIe card powered by Virident enabling the company to offer all key interfaces including SATA and SAS solutions.

“We are pleased to announce these new flash memory products. With these new drives, Seagate solidifies its commitment to the flash-based storage market by delivering enterprise SSDs and server-side solutions as well as client solutions,” said Gary Gentry, senior vice president and general manager of Seagate’s solid state drive business. “By adding more SSDs to our family of hard disk and solid state hybrid drives, we now have the broadest portfolio of storage products in the industry, delivering one-stop shopping for our customers and partners. And we’re just getting started. Seagate is committed to becoming a premier supplier of both solid state drives and storage class memory products. We have put in place a winning strategy for developing multiple high value, flash based products and solutions for our customers.”

Seagate 600 SSD: Faster Performance with 6Gb/s SATA
The ultimate laptop upgrade, the Seagate 600 SSD delivers faster boot up speeds, shorter application load times, and improved system responsiveness for the ultimate performance. Laptop users can boot up nearly four times faster and load applications more than two times faster than with a standard hard drive, greatly reducing the amount of wait time to access content[1].

“SSDs continue to be among the most popular product categories on Newegg.com as more consumers increasingly turn to them to deliver more speed, faster boot up times and superior performance,” said Patrick Chung, vice president of global product management at Newegg. “Seagate’s new line of SSDs, including the new 600 SSD, will be a great addition to our existing assortment. We’re excited to introduce the new SSDs to our customers and look forward to continuing our strategic partnership with Seagate.”

“Over the years, Seagate has been a valued partner contributing a vast array of storage solutions to our comprehensive selection of IT products,” says Lionel Garcia, vice president at Tiger Direct. “Seagate’s products are in high demand among our customers and we’re excited to add their new SSD to our assortment. As consumer demand for greater speed and shorter boot up times continues to rise, the new 600 SSD will provide customers with the ultimate performance they crave.”

Fast and as easy to install as a hard disk drive upgrade, the Seagate 600 SSD is available in multiple z-heights including an industry-first, diminutive 5mm-high drive making it ideal for most ultra-thin devices as well as standard laptop systems. The drive features up to 480GB of capacity and comes in a 2.5 form factor. It also incorporates a 6Gb/s SATA interface for fast data transfer rates and easy connection.

Seagate 600 Pro SSD—Fast Performance, Low Power with 6Gb/s SATA
A low power server and storage solution, the Seagate 600 Pro SSD is ideal for cloud system builders, hyperscale datacenters, cloud service providers, content delivery networks, and virtualized environments. An entry-level enterprise SATA SSD, the 600 Pro SSD combines fast performance and lower power delivering best-in-class performance efficiency and IOPS/watt value.

“By incorporating Seagate’s SSD technology into our product offerings we are able to address customer demand for greater speed, short, consistent response times, and greater enclosure and power efficiencies,” said Paul Poynter, CTO Rorke Data, an Avnet business unit. “As we continue to drive PC innovation in today’s markets, we look forward to integrating this enterprise SSD technology into our Rorke product line providing our discerning customers with the ultimate in performance and value.”

Engineered with efficiency in mind, the 600 Pro SSD features the industry’s highest IOPS/watt to improve system performance while reducing power and cooling costs for transaction-hungry datacenters and cloud enterprise applications. Utilizing 2.8 watts typical operating power, the drive reduces energy by automatically adjusting the power consumption to workload I/O levels— using less power for lighter workloads. The drive is also equipped with the intelligence to deliver high-data integrity, safeguarding against unexpected power loss and undetected corruption when a device is powered off.

The Seagate 600 Pro SSD is available with up to 480GB capacity and comes in 2.5-inch form factor. It is equipped with a 6Gb/s SATA interface for fast data transfer rates and easy connection to existing SATA infrastructure.

Seagate 1200 SSD— Ultra-Fast Speed, Consistent Performance with 12Gb/s SAS
Designed for demanding enterprise storage and server applications with complex, write-intensive mixed workloads, such as high-performance computing and data analytics, the Seagate 1200 SSD delivers the ultimate in speed, consistent performance and the highest levels of data integrity.

Built to deliver ultra-fast data access, the drive uses algorithms that optimize performance for frequently accessed data by prioritizing which storage operations, reads or writes, occur first and optimizing where it is stored. The result is improved performance to help close the gap between processor and data access.

It incorporates a dual port 12Gb/s SAS connector providing 100 percent faster interface speed, over previous generations, for twice the I/O bandwidth while ensuring the highest level of reliability, availability and scalability. The drive is also backwards compatible with 6Gb/s SAS environments.

The 1200 SSD leverages Seagate’s existing enterprise expertise and manufacturing excellence to deliver high levels of data integrity, manageability, testing and support. It also safeguards data against unexpected power loss and protects data from undetected, unintentional corruption.

The Seagate 1200 SSD is available with up to 800GB capacity and comes in either a 1.8-inch or 2.5 inch form factor.

Seagate X8 Accelerator— Application Performance Turbocharged
The Seagate X8 Accelerator, powered by Virident, delivers memory-class performance and storage-class capacity with enterprise reliability and data integrity in a single, low profile PCIe card. Providing industry-leading performance, with up to 1.1 million IOPS, the X8 Accelerator boosts server performance with ultra-fast speed that is up to 2X faster than the closest competitor and closer to DRAM performance than storage.

Boasting high storage capacity (up to 2.2TB) in a small footprint (HHHL half height half length) the X8 Accelerator fits in any server. The card’s x8 PCI Express Gen-2 interface enables it to deliver maximum application performance in database and virtualization applications such as Microsoft^© SQL Server, Oracle Enterprise Server, MySQL, and VMware.

For more information on Seagate’s entire portfolio of flash memory products visit http://seagate.com/www/ssd/.