Western Digital 2005 Annual Report Download - page 12

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products such as personal video recorders (PVRs), digital video recorders (DVRs), and satellite and cable set-top boxes
(STBs). These products are designed to meet the unique requirements of this specialized storage-enabled market and the
hard disk drives deliver the characteristics CE manufacturers seek most Ì quiet operation, low temperature and power
consumption specifications, high reliability and optimized streaming capabilities. The Company also offers products for
the video game console market. In addition, the Company has plans to enter the 1.0-inch hard disk drive market in the
future. The Company anticipates that 1.0-inch hard disk drive products could be used in a variety of handheld consumer
devices such as MP3 players, cameras and cell phones.
Mobile Hard Disk Drive Products. Hard disk drives used in mobile products typically include 2.5-inch form factor
drives for notebook computers. Although the desktop PC market accounts for a majority of hard disk drive sales, unit
shipments of hard disk drives for notebook computers are increasing. In 2005, the Company introduced its WD Scorpio
hard disk drive family consisting of 2.5-inch form factor products with capacities ranging from 40 GB to 80 GB and a
nominal rotation speed of 5400 RPM. These products utilize the EIDE interface.
Desktop PC Hard Disk Drive Products. WD hard disk drives designed for the desktop PC market currently consist
of 3.5-inch form factor products with capacities ranging from 40 GB to 400 GB and nominal rotation speeds of 7200
RPM. These products utilize either the EIDE or SATA interfaces, providing high performance while retaining ease of use
and overall low cost of connection. The type of EIDE interface currently used in the Company's hard disk drives is
ATA/100, which signifies a burst data transfer rate of 100 megabytes per second, which is the maximum specified data
transition that can be sustained under ideal conditions. The SATA interface available in certain of the Company's hard
disk drives enable transfer rates of up to 300 megabytes per second.
Enterprise Hard Disk Drive Products. Western Digital currently offers multiple products to address enterprise
market needs, including the WD Raptor and Caviar RAID Edition (RE) hard disk drive lines. The WD Raptor line is a
10,000 RPM enterprise-class drive with the SATA interface for enterprise applications requiring high performance and
high reliability. The WD Caviar RE hard disk drive is a 7200 RPM drive with capacities ranging from 120 GB to 400
GB. The WD Caviar RE hard disk drive includes both SATA and EIDE interfaces and has enhanced reliability features
and ratings when contrasted to our desktop products. Both WD Raptor and WD Caviar RE drives may be used in, but
not limited to, applications such as databases, e-commerce and super computing in life science, oil and gas and similar
industries, business records management, e-mail, file serving, web serving, near-line storage, medical records, engineering
data management, video broadcasting and video security.
External Hard Disk Drive Products. Western Digital also sells a line of external hard disk drive products and
related adapters that are designed to accommodate external storage interfaces including 1394/FireWire/i.Link, USB and
Ethernet. In general, these interfaces provide a high-speed interface that can be used to add additional external, portable
storage capacity to desktop and laptop computers. Most new computers sold today include one or multiple of these high
speed external interfaces, thereby supporting the ability to quickly add external hard disk drive storage. One of Western
Digital's external hard disk drive products now shipping is the WD Passport, a 80GB 5400 RPM portable 2.5-inch hard
disk drive.
Technology and Product Development
Hard disk drives are used to record, store and retrieve digital data. Performance attributes of hard disk drives, such
as their ability to access and transmit data and storage capacity, are currently better than removable or floppy disks,
optical hard disk drives and tapes, and they are more cost effective than semiconductor technology. The primary measures
of hard disk drive performance include:
""Storage capacity'' Ì the amount of data that can be stored on the hard disk drive Ì commonly expressed in
gigabytes. As defined in the hard disk drive industry, a gigabyte means one billion bytes. A byte is a digital
character, typically comprised of eight bits. A bit is a binary digit, the smallest unit of information in a digital
system.
""Average seek time'' Ì the time needed to position the heads over a selected track on the disk surface Ì
commonly expressed in milliseconds.
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