Western Digital introduced WD Caviar RAID Edition (RE) hard drives aimed at enterprise customers who treat reliability more than anything else.

The WD Caviar RE are designed and manufactured to enterprise-class standards for high reliability in a host of server applications including e-mail, file, video and Web servers, and demanding environments such as scientific computing, enterprise backup, document image management, engineering data management. Currently shipping in volume, WD Caviar RE drives are equipped with either Serial ATA (SATA) or EIDE interfaces and 7200rpm spin speed.

With 1 million hours MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure), WD Caviar RE drives offer systems builders and storage system manufacturers high reliability in high-duty cycle applications, where around-the-clock performance and high reliability are critical. WD also built into its new RE drives a Time Limited Error Recovery (TLER) feature, which helps prevent drive fallout caused by extended desktop hard drive error-recovery processes. WD Caviar RE drives carry a three-year warranty and are offered in capacities of 250, 160 and 120 GB.

WD’s FIT Lab (Functional Integrity Testing Lab) performed rigorous and extensive testing in order to certify one million hours MTBF and ensure its new RE hard drives are optimized for use in server environments.

Before WD’s development of TLER, systems integrators and storage manufacturers commonly experienced hard drive fallout when using desktop drives in RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) applications. By taking into account the distinct differences between single-user and multi-user workloads, WD Caviar RE drives implement RAID-specific TLER to improve drive compatibility with RAID controllers and significantly improve system reliability, the company believes.

WD Caviar RE hard drives are currently shipping in volume and are available through Western Digital's distribution network. Estimated street pricing for WD Caviar RE 250GB capacity with Serial ATA interface is $215 and WD Caviar RE 250GB with EIDE interface is $205.