Western Digital Corp. announced it is now shipping in volume hard drives offering Serial ATA (SATA) interface with 300 MB/s burst data transfer rate, and also showcased its NetCenter network hard drives for small office and home users. The new WD Caviar SE16 hard drives feature 16 MB cache combined with its 300 MB/s transfer rate.

According to the company, the WD Caviar SE16 drives feature advanced acoustics and quiet operation to reduce noise and significantly extend long-term reliability in the variety of applications using these drives today. Rotating at 7,200 RPM, the new drives are available with 250 GB capacity and are covered under a 3-year warranty.

Suggested retail pricing is $199 USD for WD Caviar SE16 with 250 GB capacity (model WD2500KS).

In addition, Western Digital introduced its NetCenter network hard drives for small office and home users. In just three steps, WD's NetCenter network hard drives allow user to share and save digital pictures, video and MP3 files, and printers across small office and home networks using a wired or wireless router. Users simply plug in WD's NetCenter network drive, run the installation wizard and use WD's EasyLink utility to set up the NetCenter network drive as a local drive on any PC or Macintosh computer on the network.

WD's NetCenter network drives will be available next month (June 2005) in capacities ranging from 160 to 320 GB. With WD's NetCenter network drives, users can also create private, password-protected folders; back up files from any computer on the network; access files anytime from any computer on the network, even when all other computers are powered off; and connect additional external hard drives to increase storage capacity for multiple computers on the network. WD's NetCenter network drives also allow for real-time duplication of data.

NetCenter network drives feature:
- WD Caviar SE 7,200 RPM hard drive inside for fast, quiet and cool operation without a fan
- 10/100Base-T Ethernet connection
- Common Internet File System (CIFS) for platform-independent file sharing
- Two hot-swappable USB host ports
- WD EasyLink utility to set up NetCenter as a local drive on any computer on the network
- NetCenter Manager software to easily view system status, share folders and printers, set up mirroring for real-time duplication of disk data, create and resize volumes
- Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) client for automatic assignment of TCP/IP addresses
- Automatic power management when the NetCenter hard drive is idle
- Kensington security slot

Suggested retail pricing is $399 USD for WD's NetCenter network drive with 320 GB capacity (model WDXE3200JBN).