as nasdaq wdc nasdaq 100 component s & p 500 component industry computer data storage founded april 23 1970 ; 46 years ago 1970 04 23 headquarters irvine california united states area served worldwide key people stephen d. milligan ceo & president products hard disk drives hybrid drives solid state drives revenue 14.57 billion 2015 1 operating income 1.61 billion 2015 2 net income 1.46 billion 2015 1 total assets 15.18 billion 2015 2 total equity 9.21 billion 2015 2 number of employees 76 449 2015 3 subsidiaries hgst sandisk website www.wdc.com western digital corporation commonly referred to as western digital and often abbreviated as wdc or wd is an american computer data storage company and one of the largest computer hard disk drive manufacturers in the world along with seagate technology . 4 western digital corporation has a long history in the electronics industry as an integrated circuit maker and a storage products company . western digital was founded on april 23 1970 by alvin b. phillips a motorola employee as general digital initially and briefly a manufacturer of mos test equipment . it rapidly became a speciality semiconductor maker with start up capital provided by several individual investors and industrial giant emerson electric . around july 1971 it adopted its current name and soon introduced its first product the wd1402a uart . contents 1 history 1.1 1970s 1.2 1980s 1.3 1990s 1.4 2000s 1.5 2010s 2 warranty 3 locations 4 products 4.1 software 4.2 parallel ata hard disk drives 4.3 consumer products 5 lawsuits 6 issues 7 see also 8 references 9 external links history edit 1970s edit initially financed with start up capital provided by investors and emerson electric company wdc made its money by selling calculator chips through the early years of the 1970s and by 1975 wdc was the largest independent calculator chip maker in the world . the oil crisis of the mid 1970s and the bankruptcy of its biggest calculator customer bowmar instrument 5 changed its fortunes however and in 1976 western digital declared chapter 11 bankruptcy . after this emerson withdrew their support of the company and wdc was on its own . wdc introduced several landmark products during this time including the mcp 1600 multi chip microcoded cpu . the mcp 1600 was used to implement dec s lsi 11 system and their own pascal microengine microcomputer which ran the ucsd p system version iii and ucsd pascal . the processor was also used in several single chip floppy disk drive controller chips notably the fd1771 . 6 however the wd integrated circuit that arguably drove western s forward integration was the 1771 chip the first disk drive formatter controller replacing boards of ttl logic . despite a price far higher than average cmos chips of the time it was very successful and extremely profitable . 1980s edit the fd1771 and its kin were wdc s first entry into the data storage industry ; by the early 1980s they were making hard disk drive controllers and in 1983 they won the contract to provide ibm with controllers for the pc at . that controller the wd1003 became the basis of the ata interface which wdc developed along with compaq and control data corporation s mpi division now owned by seagate technology starting in 1986 . throughout most of the 1980s the family of controllers based on the wd1003 provided the bulk of wdc s revenues and profits and for a time generated enormous corporate growth . western digital paradise vga card 8 bit isa bus circa 1989 much of the mid to late 1980s saw an effort by wdc to use the profits from their ata storage controllers to become a general purpose oem hardware supplier for the pc industry . as a result wdc purchased a number of hardware companies . these included graphics cards through its paradise subsidiary purchased 1986 which became western digital imaging core logic chipsets by purchasing faraday electronics inc. in 1987 scsi controller chips for disk and tape devices by purchasing adsi in 1986 networking wd8003 wd8013 ethernet and wd8003s starlan . they did well especially paradise which produced one of the best vga cards of the era but storage related chips and disk controllers were their biggest money makers . in 1986 they introduced the wd33c93 single chip scsi interface which was used in the first 16 bit bus mastering scsi host adapter the wd7000 fasst ; in 1987 they introduced the wd37c65 a single chip implementation of the pc at s floppy disk controller circuitry and the grandfather of modern super i o chips ; in 1988 they introduced the wd42c22 vanilla the first single chip ata hard disk controller . 1988 also brought what would be the biggest change in wdc s history . that year wdc bought the hard drive production assets of pc hardware maker tandon ; the first products of that union under wdc s own name were the centaur series of ata and xt attachment drives . citation needed 1990s edit western digital tidbit 60 wdah260 62.3 mb 2.5 inch drive mounted in 3.5 inch adapter bracket western digital caviar 80 mb model number wdac280 32 from a series of hdds for desktop pcs ; it is a 3.5 inch hdd mounted onto a 5.25 inch adapter bracket . by 1991 things were starting to slow down as the pc industry moved from st 506 and esdi drives to ata and scsi and thus were buying fewer hard disk controller boards . that year saw the rise of wdc s caviar drives brand new designs that used the latest in embedded servo and computerized diagnostic systems . eventually the successful sales of the caviar drives resulted in wdc starting to sell some of its divisions . paradise was sold to philips and since disappeared . its networking and floppy drive controller divisions went to smc networks and its scsi chip business went to future domain which was later bought out by market leader adaptec . around 1995 the technological lead that the caviar drives had enjoyed was eclipsed by newer offerings from other companies especially quantum corp. and wdc fell into a slump . products and ideas of this time did not go far . the portfolio drive a 3 inch 76 mm form factor model developed with jt storage was a flop as was the sdx hard disk to cd rom interface . wdc s drives started to slip further behind competing products and quality began to suffer ; system builders and pc enthusiasts who used to recommend wd above all else were going to the competition particularly maxtor whose products had improved significantly by the late 1990s . in an attempt to turn the tide in 1998 wdc recruited the help of ibm . this agreement gave wdc the rights to use certain ibm technologies including giant magneto resistive gmr heads and access to ibm production facilities . the result was the expert line of drives introduced in early 1999 . the idea worked and wdc regained respect in the press and among users even despite a recall in 2000 which was due to bad motor driver chips . wdc later broke ties to ibm . 2000s edit western digital wd740gd 74 gb raptor a 10 000 rpm 3.5 inch hdd in 2001 western digital became the first manufacturer to offer mainstream ata hard disk drives with 8 mib of disk buffer . at that time most desktop hard disk drives had 2 mb of buffer . wdc labeled these 8 mb models as special edition and distinguished them with the jb code the 2 mb models had the bb code . the first 8 mb cache drive was the 100 gb wd1000jb followed by other models starting with 40 gb capacity . wdc advertised the jb models for cost effective file servers . in october 2001 wd restated its prior year results to reflect the adoption of sec staff accounting bulletin no. 101 and the reclassification of connex and sanavigator results as discontinued operations . 7 in 2003 wd acquired most of the assets of bankrupt one time market leading magnetic hard drive read write head developer read rite corporation . in the same year wd offered the first 10 000 rpm serial ata hdd the wd360gd raptor with a capacity of 36 gb and an average access time of less than six milliseconds . soon the 74 gb wd740gd followed which was also much quieter . in 2004 western digital redesigned its logo for the first time since 1997 with the design of new logo focusing on the company s initials wd . 8 in 2005 western digital released the 150 gb version the wd1500 which was also available in a special version with a transparent window enabling the user to see the drive s heads move over the platters while the drive read and wrote data . as of 2004 update the wd raptor drives have a five year warranty making them a more attractive choice for inexpensive storage servers where a large number of drives in constant use increases the likelihood of a drive failure . in 2006 western digital introduced its my book line of mass market external hard drives that feature a compact book like design . on october 7 2007 western digital released several editions of a single 1 tb hard drive the largest in its my book line . in 2007 western digital acquired magnetic media maker komag . also in the same year western digital adopted perpendicular recording technology in its line of notebook and desktop drives . this allowed it to produce notebook and desktop drives in the largest classes of the time . western digital also started to produce the energy efficient gp green power 9 range of drives notable for their very low power consumption and heat dissipation but surprisingly good performance . 10 in 2007 western digital announced the wd gp drive touting rotational speed between 7200 and 5400 rpm which if potentially misleading is technically correct ; the drive spins at 5405 rpm and the green power spin speed is not variable . 11 wd gp drives are programmed to unload the heads whenever idle for a very short period of time . 12 many linux installations write to the file system a few times a minute in the background . 13 as a result there may be 100 or more load cycles per hour and the 300 000 load cycles rating of a wd gp drive may be exceeded in less than a year . 14 two third generation 1 tb velociraptors in icepack mounting frames on april 21 2008 western digital announced the next generation of its 10 000 rpm sata wd raptor series of hard drives . the new drives called wd velociraptor featured 300 gb capacity and 2.5 inch 64 mm platters enclosed in the icepack a 3.5 inch 89 mm mounting frame with a built in heat sink . western digital said that the new drives are 35 percent faster than the previous generation . on september 12 2008 western digital shipped a 500 gb 2.5 inch 64 mm notebook hard drive which is part of their scorpio blue series of notebook hard drives . on january 27 2009 western digital shipped the first 2 tb internal hard disk drive . 15 on march 30 2009 wdc entered the solid state drive market with the acquisition of siliconsystems inc. on july 27 2009 western digital announced the first 1 tb mobile hard disk drive which shipped as both a passport series portable usb drive as well as a scorpio blue series notebook drive . 16 2010s edit in april 2010 western digital acquired the magnetic glass media sputtering operations of hoya corporation and hoya magnetics singapore pte. ltd homs . while western digital had previously acquired other magnetic glass media sputtering operations the purchase of homs gave