Continuing to lead the 7,200 RPM market with its WD Caviar® family, Western Digital Corp. today introduced the industry's largest capacity hard drive the WD Caviar 200GB. This milestone marks the fourth consecutive first-to-market 7,200 RPM hard drive delivered by Western Digital, which was first to deliver 7,200 RPM hard drives in 80, 100 and 120 GB capacities. WD Caviar 60 GB-per-platter 7,200 RPM hard drives will be offered in capacities ranging from 120 to 200 GB and will be available this July. To ensure quiet operation in noise-sensitive desktop/work station environments, Western Digital offers hard drives equipped with optional fluid dynamic bearing (FDB) motors.

"Hard drive manufacturers are providing incredible levels of performance and capacity to the PC market, as well as to today's emerging markets, which demand massive local storage such as personal video recorders," said Mark Geenen, president of TrendFocus, a research firm specialising in the data storage market. Western Digital successfully focuses on the highest capacity and highest performance EIDE hard drives, and delivers another first with 200 gigabytes."

"Continued demand for the exceptional performance of 7,200 RPM hard drives at the highest capacities makes these hard drives an ideal choice for computing needs that range from top-of-the-line desktops and work stations to high-end IDE applications such as entry-level enterprise servers," said Richard E. Rutledge, vice president of marketing for Western Digital.