LAKE FOREST, Calif. - Oct. 23, 2008 - Western Digital Corp. (NYSE: WDC) today reported revenue of $2.1 billion, on shipments of approximately 39.4 million units, with net income of $211 million, or $0.93 per share, for its fiscal first quarter ending September 26, 2008. The September quarter results represented strong year-over-year performance, including growth in revenue and unit shipments of 19 percent and 34 percent, respectively. In the year-ago quarter, the company reported revenue of $1.8 billion, unit shipments of 29.4 million, and net income of $69 million, or $0.31 per share. Net income in the year-ago period was reduced by charges of $60 million for taxes related to the license of intellectual property to subsidiaries and $49 million for in-process research and development related to the acquisition of Komag.

The company shipped 14.6 million 2.5-inch drives for notebook PCs and external storage, representing a sequential quarterly increase of 25 percent, and 3.9 million 3.5-inch units for the PVR/DVR market in the first quarter, a 5 percent sequential decrease. On a year-over-year basis, these shipments increased by 147 percent and 5 percent, respectively. Branded product revenue of $383 million was essentially flat with the June quarter and up 19 percent year-over-year. The company also continued to grow its shipments of enterprise-class Serial ATA drives and hard drives featuring its unique GreenPower™ technology into the desktop, enterprise and consumer electronics markets.

The company generated $301 million in cash from operations during the September quarter, ending with total cash and cash equivalents of $1.2 billion.

John Coyne, WD president and chief executive officer, stated: "By presenting customers with a compelling product set, being selective in market and product mix, being responsive with availability and maintaining our focus on quality, efficiency, cost and execution, we have again demonstrated the strength of the WD business model and the WD team. This proven and disciplined approach has repeatedly produced strong, profitable growth."

Reflecting its ongoing targeted R&D investment over the last several years, the company commenced shipment of several new products during the first quarter, including:

• The WD Scorpio® Blue™ 2.5-inch hard drive family with capacities up to 500 GB, extending WD's industry leadership in areal density for standard form factor notebook hard drives;
  
• The 500 GB 2.5-inch My Passport™ portable USB drives for easy to use, portable storage of music, videos, photos and data files;
  
• The second-generation WD Caviar® Green™ hard drives with significantly improved power, efficiency and performance;
  
• The WD ShareSpace™ high-speed network storage system that provides up to 4 TB of cost-effective, centralized storage for small office and home networks;
  
• An expanded enterprise product line with the addition of high-capacity, high-performance WD RE3 750 GB and 1 TB 3.5-inch SATA hard drives; and
  
• The new backplane-compatible WD VelociRaptor™ hard drive, in both 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch form factors, the latest generation of the company's 10,000 RPM SATA WD VelociRaptor™ series.

The investment community conference call to discuss these results and the company's outlook will be broadcast live over the Internet today at 2 p.m. PDT/5 p.m. EDT. The call will be accessible live and on an archived basis via the link below:

• Audio Webcast: www.westerndigital.com/investor
  
• Click on "Conference Calls"
  
• Telephone Replay: 866-517-3736 (toll-free)
  
• +1-203-369-2047 (international)

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 accessible and secure from loss. WD applies its storage expertise to consumer products for external, portable and shared storage applications.

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

This press release contains forward-looking statements concerning the strength of WD's business model and team, WD's ongoing targeted research and development investment and WD's industry leadership in areal density for 2.5-inch hard drives. These forward-looking statements are based on WD's current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements, including: the impact of current negative global economic conditions; supply and demand conditions in the hard drive industry; actions by competitors; unexpected advances in competing technologies; uncertainties related to the development and introduction of products based on new technologies and expansion into new hard drive markets; business conditions and growth in the various hard drive markets; pricing trends and fluctuations in average selling prices; changes in the availability and cost of commodity materials and specialized product components that WD does not make internally; negative impacts of the conditions in the global credit markets on WD's investment portfolio; and other risks and uncertainties listed in WD's recent Form 10-K filed with the SEC on August 20, 2008, to which your attention is directed. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof, and WD undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.

Financial Statements

First Quarter Fiscal 2009 Investor Information Summary

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