Western Digital is, as we already know, one of the leading manufacturers of computer storage solutions for both the consumer and the enterprise market. One of the company's most successful products is part of the Raptor and VelociRaptor lineup. These drives are considered a reliable solution by a considerable number of users. Besides the Raptors, Western Digital has another HDD lineup that is meant to provide support to enterprise users - the "RE" series.

The storage company announced yesterday that it was shipping the new WD RE3 SATA hard drives as part of the latest generation of "RE" family drives. The company's new products are said to improve performance for HDDs meant to cope with the demanding requirements of the enterprise sector. They bring an enhanced vibration and shock tolerance, and deploy new electronics to increase performance with approximately 20 percent, according to a statement coming straight from Western Digital.

"WD has continued to leverage its extensive experience gained from previous generation enterprise drives, as well as our enterprise-class WD VelociRaptor(TM) drives, to develop a hard drive perfectly suited for servers, network attached storage and storage networks," said Tom McDorman, vice president and general manager of enterprise storage solutions for WD. "WD's RE3 family offers the best combination of enhanced features, superior reliability, and optimum performance for enterprise applications." he added.

The new RE3 drives feature a 1.2 million hours MTBF, native command queuing (NCQ), time limited error recovery (TLER), and an extensive and enhanced testing process to ensure long-term reliability for demanding enterprise applications. These features can also be found on the rest of the company's RE series.

Other technical specifications include a dual processor that enables a 20 percent performance improvement over the previous generation. The RE3 hard drives also make use of the company's RAFF and IntelliSeek technologies, which improve seek time and reduce power consumption.

Users can acquire these drives in 500GB, 320GB and 250GB capacities, with the Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) ranging from $79 (for the 250 model) to $119 (for the 500GB model).