LAKE FOREST, Calif., Aug. 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Western Digital Corp. has been recognized by solution-provider partners and readers of CMP Technology's VARBusiness magazine for outstanding customer satisfaction levels and has been lauded in the Annual Report Card (ARC) award program. WD received the Company of the Year award in the Enterprise Disk Drives category from the biweekly magazine at a ceremony held Aug. 15, at the XChange '06 Conference in St. Louis.

Now in its 21st year, the VARBusiness ARC Awards recognize outstanding partner programs in 19 product and service categories including desktop computers, servers, storage management, Internet application server software and networking hardware. Winners were selected based on the survey results of more than 5,000 systems integrators, IT consulting organizations, value-added resellers (VARs), solution providers and software developers.

"The VARBusiness Annual Report Card is the industry defining research on vendor/partner relationships," says Lawrence M. Walsh, the magazine's editor. "It is a significant benchmark because the winners are selected by their own solution provider partners."

"Solution providers' preference of WD in the enterprise disk drives category underscores the tremendous value that WD's enterprise Serial ATA WD Raptor(R) and WD RE and RE2 drives offer them with high reliability and high performance or capacity," said Stacy Hand, senior director of worldwide channel marketing. "WD is committed to providing resellers with the right SATA products to meet VARs' needs for high quality, reliable storage solutions, as well as superior service, partner programs and support."

Research was conducted by Bernett Research Services, a Boston-based data collection company, and Answers Research, the Solana Beach, Calif.-based market research and consulting firm.

About VARBusiness Magazine

For the past 19 years, VARBusiness' strategic resources have been the gateway to the Solution Provider community. VARBusiness provides strategic insight for technology integrators through industry-defining research, in-depth editorial, channel events and innovative Web services, enabling these IT professionals to make educated decisions for their businesses, partnerships and customers. VARBusiness has been the recipient of numerous industry awards for both editorial content and design. Additional information about VARBusiness products, events and services, is available at its Web site, http://www.varbusiness.com/.

About WD

WD, one of the storage industry's pioneers and long-time leaders, provides products and services for people and organizations that collect, manage and use digital information. The company produces reliable, high-performance hard drives that keep users' data close-at-hand and secure from loss.

WD was founded in 1970. The company's storage products are marketed to leading systems manufacturers and selected resellers under the Western Digital and WD brand names. Visit the Investor section of the company's Web site (http://www.westerndigital.com/) to access a variety of financial and investor information.

Western Digital, WD and WD Raptor are registered trademarks and the WD logo is a trademark of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. All other brand and product names mentioned herein are the property of their respective companies.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20000711/WDCLOGO )

CONTACT: Karen Mazzei, Press Relations, +1-949-672-7919,
karen.mazzei@wdc.com, or Bob Blair, Investor Relations, +1-949-672-7834,
robert.blair@wdc.com, both of Western Digital Corp.

Web site: http://www.varbusiness.com/

Web site: http://www.westerndigital.com/