WESTERN DIGITAL CONTINUES LEADERSHIP ROLE WITH 1ST SHIPPING 1.6 GB,
3.5-INCH, ENHANCED IDE DRIVE

5200 rpm performance leader featured in new AT&T, Dell and Gateway 2000
systems

IRVINE, CA -- May 1, 1995 -- Western Digital Corporation (NYSE:WDC) today
announced that the Company is now delivering its new Caviar AC31600 (1.6
GB) 3-platter, 3-5-inch drive, the highest performance Enhanced IDE drive
available on the market. Designed to provide the capacity and performance
necessary for today's new Pentium PCs and aftermarket upgrades, the Caviar
AC31600 offers high-speed data transfer rates of up to 16.6MB/s. The
Caviar AC31600 drives will be featured in new systems from AT&T Global
Information Solutions, Dell Corporation and Gateway 2000 Incorporated.
Western Digital's Caviar drives incorporate all the advanced features
necessary to provide today's discerning desktop users with the high level
of performance and capacity needed for new multitasking operating systems,
multimedia, Internet and other online services. The growing popularity of
these applications require storage manufacturers to pay particular
attention to the requirements for faster speed and throughput, increased
capacities, as well as faster and uninterrupted data transfer.

"AT&T is pleased to offer this high capacity, high speed drive in our
newest Globalyst PCs," said Rob Howe, vice president, worldwide PC
marketing, AT&T Global Information Solutions. "The addition of Western
Digital's drive to Globalyst PCs demonstrates AT&T's continuing commitment
to offer high performance computing solutions for our customers."

"Our customers are hungry for increased capacity and performance, so we are
delighted to integrate the Caviar AC31600 into our product line," said
Greg Weir, peripherals product marketing manager for Dell Computer
Corporation. "We think our customers will be impressed with the Caviar
AC31600's speed and storage capacity."

"Western Digital's new Caviar AC31600 gives Gateway's P5-120 system a
leading-edge value," said Rob Cheng, director of desktop products for
Gateway 2000. "We appreciate Western Digital's ability to bring new
technology to market very quickly so that we can immediately integrate the
largest hard drives available into our PCs, providing our customers with
increased storage capacity and improved performance."

The new 540 MB per platter Caviar drive is implemented with thin film heads
and a new proprietary WD chipset. The WD chipset, Architecture III,
increases bit densities through hard sectoring, improved format
efficiencies and a PRML (Partial Response Maximum Likelihood) read
channel.PRML increases areal density in order to allow more capacity per
disk.

"Today's users continue to demand more performance," said John Burger, vice
president of marketing for Western Digital's Personal Storage Group. "The
trend toward higher performance is evident everywhere, from the evolution
of the 486 microprocessor to Pentium, the ISA to PCI bus, and the rapid
transition of 2X to 4X CD-ROMs. The drive industry is no different, with
demand for higher disk performance through increased areal density, faster
rotations, and higher data transfer speeds."

By aggressively introducing new technologies while leveraging the common
architecture strategy based on a common proprietary Western Digital
chipset, Western Digital continues its 3-year history of leading time to
market product introductions. This single platform approach provides the
Company with the highest level of flexibility and ease of qualification in
the industry. This innovative design philosophy has enabled Western
Digital to achieve substantially improved yields, rapid cost reductions,
higher productivity, and asset management leadership.

The Caviar AC31600 enables the maximum disk performance under local bus
environments through the use of 16.6 MB/s Mode 4 PIO (programmed
input/output) and 16.6 MB/s Mode 2 multi-word DMA (direct memory access).
The introduction of the local bus brought in a high-speed, 32-bit wide
data path for the disk system. The new Enhanced IDE specification added
PIO Modes 3 and 4 and DMA Modes 1 and 2, which boost overall host data
transfer rates to between 11.1 and 16.6 MB/sec.

The Caviar AC31600 offers a rotational speed of 5200 RPM and includes
CacheFlow4 for advanced, adaptive read and write caching capabilities to
complement the advanced caching capabilities of today's major operating
systems. The drive has an average read seek time of sub-10ms and spindle
latency of 5.76 ms to provide fast mechanical access to both cached and
uncached data. "This is the first drive designed to take full advantage of
the higher transfer rates achievable with Mode 4 PIO," said Burger. "The
5200 RPM capability, combined with the other advanced features of the
Caviar AC31600, allow users to expect up to a 50% improvement in real-time
applications."

Western Digital was the first to implement a 3-year warranty for PC drives,
carried on all Caviar drives. The Caviar family of drives are extensively
tested in the Company's FIT Lab (Functional Integrity Test Lab) to ensure
compatibility with AT-compatible computers and standard operating systems.
Caviar drives offer guaranteed compatibility and a Mean Time to Failure
rate of 300,000 hours.

Suggested retail pricing for the Caviar AC31600 drive is $699.00, OEM
evaluation unit pricing is $495.

Headquartered in Irvine, California, Western Digital Corporation is a
recognized leader in the design and manufacture of hard disk drives,
integrated circuits, and graphics controller board-level products. The
company markets these products to leading systems manufacturers and
selected resellers under the Western Digital, Caviar, Paradise, and
RocketCHIP brand names. Western Digital is the first Fortune 500 company
to have been awarded company-wide ISO 9001 registration, linking all WD
organizations with a consistent global standard for quality processes. The
Company was founded in 1970 and has long been noted for its storage and
graphics controller expertise and end-market systems-level design
knowledge.

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