HGST Ships Highest-Capacity, Highest-Performing 10K RPM Hard Drive For Mission-Critical 24/7 Data Center Applications

SAN JOSE, Calif., July 9, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --HGST, a Western Digital company (NASDAQ: WDC), today announced that it is now shipping the world's highest capacity and highest performing 10K RPM hard disk drive (HDD) – the Ultrastar® C10K1800. Based on HGST's field proven high-quality design, the 2.5-inch small form factor (SFF), enterprise-class Ultrastar® C10K1800 combines high capacity with a significant improvement in both random write and sequential performance for mission-critical storage applications requiring 24/7 availability.

As the demand for enterprise-class storage grows, customers are increasingly seeking tiered storage infrastructures built along a range of raw IOPS performance, capacity and $/GB price efficiencies. While solid state drives (SSDs) and 15K HDDs fill a clear need in high performance solutions, the demand for 10K HDDs continues to be strong as customers seek better $/GB metrics.

"Our customers continue to contend with explosive data growth, balancing disparate application loads, while needing to improve data center space and power efficiencies," said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing, HGST. "By fusing unmatched capacity with ultimate performance in the same drive, the Ultrastar C10K1800 offers the optimal balance of capacity, performance and cost. We expect our customers to use the Ultrastar C10K1800 with a complement of SSDs and 15K performance HDDs in tiered pools of storage."

Technology Innovation
Powered by several technological innovations including HGST's media cache architecture, an upgraded 12Gbps SAS interface and advanced format options, the Ultrastar C10K1800 delivers significant improvements in performance and reliability to sustain even the most demanding 24/7 enterprise workloads. Most notably is HGST's media cache architecture – a disk-based caching technology, which provides a large non-volatile cache on the media resulting in improved reliability and data integrity during unexpected power loss, as well as a significant improvement in write performance even at high workloads when compared to solutions with limited NAND or flash-based NVC.

Key benefits of the Ultrastar C10K1800 include:

• Highest storage capacity – A new capacity point of 1.8TB with a 50 percent improvement over prior generation 10K 2.5-inch SFF drives. 
• Unmatched performance – Leveraging HGST's media cache architecture, the Ultrastar C10K1800 provides a boost of up to 2.5X  in random write performance and a 23 percent improvement in sequential performance over prior generation 2.5-inch SFF 10K HDDs.
• Blazing fast next generation 12Gbps SAS interface – Designed for next generation data centers, the Ultrastar C10K1800 provides twice the bandwidth of existing 6Gbps SAS interface, while lowering data center cost and complexity along with backwards compatibility for existing devices and enclosures.
• Advanced format options that support new and legacy systems – Enabling larger capacities with support for the latest standards including 4K native and 512 emulation, along with a 512 native offering for legacy compatibility.
• Improved power savings – Up to a seven percent improvement in active and idle power savings while providing significant performance improvements over the prior generation 2.5-inch SFF 10K HDDs.
• New security and encryption options for data-at-rest protection – A host of security and encryption options including Instant Secure Erase (ISE), Trusted Computing Group (TCG) enterprise SSC-compliant Self-Encrypting Drives (SED), and TCG enterprise SED with FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) 140-2 certification, Level 2.

Availability
Backed by customer endorsed, field-proven technologies and HGST's commitment to quality, the new Ultrastar C10K1800 HDD family delivers leading enterprise-class specifications such as 2M hours MTBF, an annualize failure rate (AFR) of 0.44 percent and comes with a five-year limited warranty. Built for the modern tiered storage infrastructure, the Ultrastar C10K1800 joins HGST's broad portfolio of enterprise-class PCIe, SSD, and HDD products.

The Ultrastar C10K1800 hard drive family is now shipping, and is being qualified by select OEMs.  The FIPS certified models will be available in January 2015.

Complementing the new Ultrastar C10K1800 HDD family, HGST also announced today that the 512 emulation format for its 15K enterprise-class Ultrastar C15K600 product family will be shipping in July.

For more information about the HGST Ultrastar C10K1800 solution, please visit www.hgst.com.

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About HGST
HGST, a Western Digital company (NASDAQ: WDC), develops innovative, advanced hard disk drives, enterprise-class solid state drives, external storage solutions and services used to store, preserve and manage the world's most valued data. HGST addresses customers' rapidly changing storage needs by delivering intelligent storage devices that tightly integrate hardware and software to maximize solution performance. Founded by the pioneers of hard drives, HGST provides high-value storage for a broad range of market segments, including Enterprise, Cloud, Data Center, Mobile Computing, Consumer Electronics and Personal Storage. HGST was established in 2003 and maintains its U.S. headquarters in San Jose, California. To find out more about HGST enterprise-class HDD, SSD and SW solutions, please visit www.hgst.com.   

This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements relating to expected demand for certain categories of HDDs and availability dates for HDD products. 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 changes in markets, demand, global economic conditions and other risks and uncertainties listed in Western Digital's recent SEC filings, to which your attention is directed. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak on as of the date hereof, and HGST/WD undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.

MTBF target is based on a sample, aggregate population of a drive family and is estimated by statistical measurements and acceleration algorithms under nominal operating conditions. MTBF ratings are not intended to predict an individual drive's reliability. MTBF does not constitute a warranty.

One GB is equal to one billion bytes, and one TB equals 1,000 GB (one trillion bytes). Actual capacity will vary depending on operating environment and formatting.

Ultrastar is a registered trademark of HGST, Inc. and its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries.  All other trademarks are properties of their respective owners.

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SOURCE HGST, A Western Digital Company