Out in Front: August 15, 1996

Western Digital has competed strictly in the PC market for IDE (integrated drive electronics) disk drives in recent years, but new 2.1- and 4.3-Gbyte SCSI drives mark the company's entry into enterprise storage markets. The new WD Enterprise family of 3.5-in. drives rotate at 7200 rpm and can attain peak transfer rates from the media of 17.5 Mbytes/sec. Other key specs include an 8-msec average seek time, a fast/wide Ultra SCSI-3 interface, a 512-kbyte or 1-Mbyte buffer, and a 1 million-hour MTBF.

The company made a conservative choice to use thin-film inductive heads, although most other competitors in the high-end disk market have moved to MR (magnetoresistive) heads. Western Digital believes that thin-film heads are still more cost-effective, and the WD Enterprise design yields an areal density of 769 Mbits/in2. using those heads. The areal density results in a two-platter, 2-Gbyte drive and a four-platter, 4-Gbyte drive, whereas most competing drives use three and five platters, respectively.

Western Digital plans to begin shipping the drives to OEMs in September and through distribution in the fourth quarter. Prices vary with quantity, but large system vendors are currently paying approximately $0.20 per megabyte for such high-end drives.

—by Maury Wright

Western Digital Corp, Irvine, CA. (714) 932-5000.