WD INTRODUCES HIGH-PERFORMANCE FOUR-BAY PERSONAL CLOUD STORAGE SYSTEM

New WD My Cloud™ EX4 Delivers Ultimate Reliability and Advanced NAS Features with Up to 16 TB  of Capacity

Kuala Lumpur – 22 November 2013 – WD®, a Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) company and a world leader in storage solutions for the connected life, today introduced WD My Cloud™ EX4, a high-performance four-bay network attached storage (NAS) solution for creative professionals, prosumers, workgroups and anyone looking for a reliable way to save, share, back up, stream and manage massive amounts of digital data.

          “We believe that there’s no place like home for the cloud,” said Jim Welsh, executive vice president and general manager of WD's branded products and consumer electronics groups. “Everyone is inundated with thousands of digital files scattered across multiple computers and mobile devices, and controlling that chaos is a challenge. The new WD My Cloud EX4 is an affordable and reliable solution for customers to control that chaos, providing high performance, manageable storage capabilities with access to all of their files anywhere, anytime.”

The new WD My Cloud EX4 is designed to provide a robust, reliable and efficient storage solution to creative professionals, prosumers, workgroups and any user who requires a good storage for their digital content.

          Featuring the category leading WD Red™ line of hard drives specifically designed for home and small office NAS systems, WD My Cloud EX4 customers enjoy ultimate reliability from the trusted name in storage. WD Red drives are powered by NASware™ 2.0 technology, which improves drive reliability and protects customer data in the event of a power loss or disruption. Additionally, WD Red hard drives feature 3D Active Balance Plus, an enhanced balance control technology that significantly improves overall drive performance and reliability.    
     WD My Cloud EX4 provides several capacity options, allowing customers to choose from a drive-less enclosure that allows customers to customize their capacity and add additional drives as their library of digital content grows, or an 8 TB, 12 TB or 16 TB model1. With Easy-Slide-Drive technology, WD My Cloud EX4 allows customers to easily install or hot-swap drives in seconds, without the need for a screwdriver, toolkit or trays. Additionally, customers can attach compatible USB 3.0 hard drives to the USB expansion ports on the WD My Cloud EX4 to instantly expand their storage capacity.    

Ultimate Data Protection
     WD My Cloud EX4 arms users with multiple options to secure digital data from a potential loss by providing RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 or allowing users to select from spanning and JBOD modes for even more options to manage data. Customers can also use their WD My Cloud EX4 to back up all of their computers and devices with WD SmartWare™ Pro software for PC users. Mac users can utilize all the features of Apple® Time Machine® backup software to protect their data. The WD My Cloud EX4 can also backup itself, either to another WD My Cloud EX4 in a different location, or to cloud services such as Amazon S3 and ElephantDrive. To ensure 24/7 data protection and reliability the WD My Cloud EX4 includes redundant power supplies and Ethernet ports.

Susan Chong (right), Sales Manager, Branded Products, WD Malaysia and Albert Chang, Senior Regional Marketing Manager, WD APAC Branded Marketing presents the new WD My Cloud EX4, which is now available in Malaysia.

Advanced Streaming and Serving
     WD My Cloud EX4 serves as a home’s digital entertainment hub, configurable for up to 16 TB of movies and music that can then be streamed to any DLNA®/UPnP® certified multimedia device such as gaming consoles, smart TVs and WD TV® Live™ media players. The Twonky 7.2, DLNA-certified 1.5 media server and iTunes® server make for simple streaming of large movie and music libraries.

     Additionally, the integrated file server, FTP server, backup server and P2P download server provide advanced data serving options for WD My Cloud EX4 users.

     Customers can also customize their NAS, monitor system health, manage users and energy saving features with the WD My Cloud EX4 dashboard, as well as use a suite of third party apps, including aMule, Icecast, Joomla!®, phpBB®, phpMyAdmin and SqueezeCenter.

Anywhere Access to WD My Cloud EX4
     Available for iOS® and Android™ devices, the WD My Cloud mobile app allows users to view photos, stream video and share, save and manage files from anywhere on their smartphones or tablets. The mobile app makes file sharing and collaborating simple, allowing customers to easily email files, share files as a link, and print and open files with third party apps. The WD My Cloud mobile app integrates major public cloud services so that customers can easily transfer files from their Dropbox™, SkyDrive® and Google Drive™ public cloud accounts .

Price and Availability
     WD My Cloud EX4 is distributed by Amble Action Sdn Bhd in Malaysia. MSRP is RM1,359 for the drive-less WD My Cloud EX4, RM2,699 for 8 TB, RM3,259 for 12 TB and RM3,999 for 16 TB. The WD My Cloud mobile app currently is available for download from the App StoreSM and Google PlayTM. WD My Cloud EX4 comes with a two year limited warranty.

Compatibility
      WD My Cloud EX4 is compatible with Windows® 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista®, Windows XP, OS X Mavericks™, Mountain Lion™, Lion®, Snow Leopard®, as well as DLNA®/UPnP® enabled devices.

New Seagate NAS Storage Solution Delivers Industry’s Highest Capacity And Best Performance

Custom-Built NAS HDDs Launched with Strong Support from Top NAS Providers

MALAYSIA, June 14, 2013 — Seagate Technology today took the wraps off its new Seagate NAS HDD— a cutting-edge drive custom-built for always-on, one- to five-bay network attached storage (NAS) systems. Engineered with performance and reliability in mind, the new drives are available in multiple capacity points including a 4TB option— the industry’s highest capacity NAS hard disk drive (HDD) solution available— and strong industry support from nine NAS system partners.

“Today about 50 percent of NAS arrays is sold diskless meaning that customers are challenged with identifying and installing the right storage for their system. By developing a drive like NAS HDD, we’ve taken the guesswork out of it and made it easy for customers to identify the right drive for their system,” said Scott Horn, Seagate vice president of marketing. “By collaborating closely with a variety of partners who specialize in NAS systems, we’re making what was a confusing effort into a plug-and-play one.”

Featuring up to 4TB of storage the drive now enables NAS systems, such as those utilized in homes and small to midsize businesses (SMB), to provide up to 20TB of data in a five-bay NAS array. And with over 30 percent capacity improvement over competitive offerings, the NAS HDD 4TB drive delivers the highest capacity available on the market.

Cost effective drives built specifically for NAS solutions, the 4TB option has the capacity to store over 819,000 photos, 1 million songs or nearly 500 hours of high-definition (HD) video content—more than enough space for the average household.  It is also ideal for small businesses with large enough capacities to support CAD files, medical images and databases.

“QNAP is thrilled to be teaming up with Seagate to offer our customers a high-performance storage solution optimized for NAS systems,” said Meiji Chang, general manager of QNAP. “The Seagate NAS HDD allows us to deliver the highest capacity storage offering on the market while providing our customers with a huge boost in performance and a reliable business level NAS solution for 24x7 operations.”

“Households and SMBs continue to generate a significant amount of data, and need fast and reliable storage solutions,” said John Rydning, IDC's research vice president for hard disk drives. “Rather than taking hours or days to transfer a large amount of digital content over the internet to a cloud storage service provider, Seagate’s new NAS HDD provides a high-capacity solution for fast data transfers and backups on-premise over local networks.”

Built to provide up to 10 percent performance advantage, over the competition for 24x7 NAS applications, the NAS HDD is engineered for performance in always on applications and can support multiple HD video streams and user profiles. The drive boasts near silent acoustics operating below the range of audible sound for the human ear with as low as 1.9 bels, providing optimized acoustics for the home or SMB environment. It also features Seagate’s own NASWorks™ technology which improves drive reliability by supporting features that limit drive vibrations and support extended error recovery controls for better data integrity.

Seagate NAS HDDs are built and tested to provide industry-leading performance for small NAS systems.
Key features of the NAS HDD include:

• Industry’s Highest Capacity NAS Drive— up to 4TB available, the NAS HDD offers a 30 percent capacity advantage over the competition.
• Best Performance for 1- to -5-bay NAS Systems— built and tested to provide industry-leading performance, NAS HDDs offer the industry’s highest throughput to deliver the performance demanded by NAS solutions.
• NASWorks— supports error correction via customized error recovery controls, power management and vibration tolerance for optimal performance and reliability in a 1- to 5-bay solution.
• Improved Vibration Tolerance— dual-plane balance supports the unique weighted motor design minimizing vibration that can be amplified in multi-drive systems improving the drive’s performance and system reliability.
• Advanced Power Management— supports multiple user-selectable power profiles that can optimize power usage for different workloads to minimize power consumption while maintaining high-availability performance.
• Quiet Drive Operation— enhances the end customer experience with near-silent acoustics for low-noise environments like living rooms or office spaces.

Designed with compatibility in mind, Seagate NAS hard disk drives have been rigorously tested by some of today’s top NAS providers and flawlessly integrated into their NAS solutions. For more information on the Seagate NAS HDD and qualified OEM partners please visit www.seagate.com/www/nashdd.

Strong NAS Partner Support
“Seagate's new NAS hard drives have been fully verified as being compatible with all ASUSTOR NAS products. Our users demand reliable performance for 24x7 applications and we are glad to be able to offer them more choices when selecting specialized hard disks for their NAS,” said Shawn Shu, president of ASUSTOR. “We are excited for the launch of the Seagate NAS hard drives and believe that a combination of these drives with ASUSTOR’s full range of NAS products will create an optimal user experience.”

“D-Link prides itself on developing innovative and intuitive solutions. By adding Seagate’s new NAS HDD to our compatible product list, we continue to make it easy for our customers to choose the right storage and get the best experience and reliability from their D-Link NAS,” said Jocelyn Chung, D-Link vice president of marketing, D-Link global headquarters.

“LenovoEMC is focused on delivering innovative and cost-effective storage solutions that our customers value,” said Eric Arcese, president and general manager, LenovoEMC Ltd. “Seagate’s new NAS HDD has been built and tested to provide a performance advantage for always-on NAS applications while at the same time being offered at an affordable price. As a qualified drive for use with Lenovo network storage products, the NAS HDD gives our customers the opportunity to further maximize the return on their technology investments— that’s what we call a ‘win-win’ all around.”

“Seagate has been a trusted partner for many years, and we are excited to integrate these new drives into our DiskStations and RackStations,” said Vic Hsu, CEO of Synology Inc. “By supporting Seagate’s new NAS HDD, Synology will provide users with more freedom in the choice of hard drives and continue to deliver robust and reliable NAS solutions that our customers can count on.”

“The majority of our NAS systems are sold diskless so it just makes sense to partner with an industry leader like Seagate and bring a product to market that is purpose built for NAS arrays,” said Florence Shih, general manager of Thecus Technology. “And with a name like NAS HDD, it makes it easy for customers to ask for the product by name and know that they are getting the right drive for our solutions.”

WD IS BUILDING BETTER HARD DRIVES FOR THE NEW PC AND CLOUD COMPUTING ERA

Company Launches New Products, Demonstrates Future Capabilities at Computex Taipei 2013

Kuala Lumpur – 11 June 2013 – During a press event in Taipei on 3rd June, WD®, a Western Digital company, shared its vision for the role hard drives play in the future of personal computing. Spokespersons Matt Rutledge, vice president and general manager, client computing, and Pat Wilkison, cloud products, announced two new products and described the company’s innovations in the areas of thin-and-light PC storage, solid-state hybrid drives and data center storage – all of which being a focus of WD innovation during today’s changing PC landscape and relentless global data growth.

According to WD, the PC is undergoing a transformation in form factor and feature sets, contributing to an evolving disaggregated storage model. Leading manufacturers are driving new, compelling products for consumers who are quickly adapting to the mobile advantages of smartphones and tablets, yet whose data collection and content creation habits demand the capacity of traditional hard drives. Additionally, the cornerstone of the disaggregated model is cloud datacenter, where the immense capacity that only hard drives can serve is required.

Rutledge demonstrated how hard drives could be designed in the future to enable affordable high-capacity storage in tablets and other always-on, ultra-portable and low-profile computing devices by utilizing special free-fall and shock sensors; robust mechanics; miniaturized electronics; and software intelligence that manages the use of NAND for data buffering and uninterrupted content experiences for consumers.

The company’s 5 mm thick, 2.5-inch WD Black™ SSHD is now being evaluated by OEM customers, who, with that technology, can design ultra-thin notebooks and other low-profile devices with as much as 500 GB of storage, yet for a fraction of the cost of an SSD.

WD introduced the world’s thinnest 1 TB hard drive with its new 2.5-inch WD Blue™ 7 mm hard drive, which offers OEMs, channel integrators and consumers a unique storage solution for thin and light systems, slimmer notebooks, as well as compatibility with the industry-standard 9.5 mm drive slots of mainstream notebooks.

Wilkison presented the evolving model for cloud datacenters, which are providing massive, scale-out service for social media sites, content services for mobile devices and commercial cloud storage. He outlined the tiered building blocks of today’s datacenters, dominated by the highest capacity, most reliable hard drives to facilitate annual data growth of more than 30 percent; as well as WD's series of high-capacity and high-performance drives and where they fit in the datacenter ecosystem.

The company unveiled the first enterprise-class hard drives for scale-out datacenter market, the WD Se family of drives. Built on an enterprise-grade platform for reliable 24x7x365 datacenter operation, WD Se is tailored to deliver the right combination of performance, reliability and robustness for large-scale replicated environments, mid-sized network attached storage (NAS) deployment, and backup/archiving applications.