by Anton Shilov
07/03/2003 | 05:03 AM
Western Digital will soon launch a very broad range of new products, unofficial sources revealed today. The company is expected to announce a number of HDDs no one probably expected it to announce.
<%BANNER[article]%>WD will apparently start offering Caviar and Protégé Hard Disk Drives with Fluid Dynamic Bearing (FDB) spindle motors very soon. The products will be marked like WDxxxxLB and will be supplied only at distributor’s request.
Besides, expect WD to start making HDDs with Parallel ATA-133 interface, what is a very unexpected decision because most of storage companies originally planned to skip Parallel ATA-133 standard and switch to Serial ATA-150 from Parallel ATA-100. Note that Parallel ATA-100 HDDs from WD are marked as WDxxxxxB, Serial ATA-150 HDDs are marked like WDxxxxxD and Parallel ATA-133 devices will be marked as WDxxxxxE.
It seems like WD enjoys the business it makes supplying its HDDs for Microsoft XBOX console because it now intends to enter Home Enterteintment A/V market with hard disk drives designed for home-appliances like set-top-boxes, digital VCRs and other devices of the same kind. The marking of such HDDs will end with “X”, “Y” or “Z”.
The information is strictly unofficial, of course.