Western Digital Debuts S25 SAS Hard Drives

The drives are also the company's first to include support for T10 Protection Information (PI) for advanced data integrity.

Hard-drive manufacturer and storage solutions provider Western Digital (NYSE: WDC) announced the availability of its third-generation S25 SAS hard drives, serving the enterprise server and storage market. Shipping this week, the 2.5-inch, 10,000 rpm, S25 with SAS 6G bps interface hard drives are available in capacities of 300GB, 450GB, 600GB and 900GB. The hard drives are currently shipping to OEMs, with broader availability at select resellers and distributors worldwide later next quarter. The hard drives are covered by a five-year limited warranty.

The company said the new family of S25 SAS drives was designed to provide the speed required to service an array of enterprise needs, delivering high performance with its 6G bps SAS interface. With its small form factor allowing for more system airflow, resulting in lower cooling costs for customers, the latest S25 SAS drives require less than 8 watts to operate and have a 2.0 million hour Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) rating. Western Digital€™s third-generation of 2.5-inch SAS drives are also its first to include support for T10 Protection Information (PI) for advanced data integrity, and the first to provide optional models that feature drive-level self-encryption that meets the Trusted Computing Group's specification for Enterprise Class A encryption.

The drives also feature NoTouch ramp load technology, which means the recording head never touches the disk media to help ensure less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit, and Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF), which optimizes operation and performance when the drives are used in vibration-prone, multi-drive chassis.

"Continuing our commitment to the industry's fastest-growing segment€”2.5-inch drives€”the company is updating our small form factor SAS offering with the advanced technology of our third-generation drive, including a new 900GB capacity point," said Darwin Kauffman, vice president of enterprise storage solutions at Western Digital. "Our latest generation of WD S25 SAS drives offers a powerful combination of enterprise-class performance and industry-leading reliability that is ideal for demanding high-performance computing and mission-critical environments. WD is also delivering higher-capacity offerings and the power efficiency of the small form factor footprint, providing the most efficient storage solution for IT professionals and enabling lower TCO [Total Cost of Ownership]."

The company recently announced the release of the Sentinel DX4000, a network storage solution aimed at small and midsize businesses (SMBs). The DX4000 includes the Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials operating system software and the Intel D525 Dual Core Atom CPU. The DX4000 offers centralized shared storage and automatic server-based backup and restore for up to 25 devices (PC and Mac) in the network, as well as data protection with built-in hardware and software redundancy for all connected devices in the network.