Lowry Digital Images Uses Hundreds of Terabytes of WD Caviar? SE Serial ATA Hard Drives in Massive Data Storage System
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
High-performance Serial ATA (SATA) hard drives from Western Digital Corp. (NYSE: WDC) are playing a key role in the restoration of classic films being prepared for DVD distribution, as well as in the production of new film negatives for long-term preservation. The drives are part of a high-technology system created by Burbank, Calif.-based Lowry Digital Images to give new life to old movies.
Frequent handling and the passage of time wreak havoc on the film stock on which many memorable motion pictures were made. The conversion to digital format is unforgiving, so flaws would be revealed clearly when the movies are shown as DVDs.
Lowry Digital Images scans films onto high-capacity, high-performance Western Digital WD Caviar SE SATA hard drives and searches the original films for problems. Many are dirty, streaked, soft-focused and grainy. Some jitter and weave as they're played, and many show flickering colors. Lowry Digital Images removes these and other imperfections using its own highly advanced, proprietary software program. This process is followed by a manual, frame-by-frame quality inspection. Some newer films require repairs because of damage caused by heavy use.
Lowry Digital Images employs a battery of 600 Power Mac G5s with dual processors and a massive storage complex built using hundreds of WD Caviar SE 250 GB SATA hard drives. The firm currently has 370 terabytes (TB) of on-line storage capacity and expects further growth this year.
Some of Lowry Digital Images' high-resolution film restorations require 75 MB of storage for each of their 170,000 frames - totaling 13 TB per film. Additionally, for each movie, Lowry Digital Images uses WD Caviar SE SATA 250 GB hard drives for transport of film segments between Lowry's facilities and its filmmaking studio clients.
Western Digital WD Caviar SE SATA hard drives were selected because their 8 MB ache improves the flow of data. John Lowry, CEO of Lowry Digital Images, said, "The high performance of Western Digital's SE drives helps increase the efficiency of our system. We are continuously moving tremendous amounts of data, so hard drive performance is critical."
Richard E. Rutledge, vice president of marketing for Western Digital, said, "The kind of innovation represented in these hard drives is helping many companies in non-PC markets build digital data storage systems that improve their methods and results. Western Digital is designing drives with many applications in mind in addition to PCs."
John Lowry has been processing motion images since 1972, when he cleaned-up and enhanced the live television broadcasts from the moon during the Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 lunar landings. At Lowry Digital Images, the first of more than 90 feature films he worked on was North by Northwest - just four years ago. Other prominent titles include Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Singing in the Rain, Dr. Zhivago, Indiana Jones, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Sunset Boulevard, Moby Dick, Peter Pan, and most recently, the original Star Wars trilogy for Lucasfilm.
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About Western Digital
Western Digital, 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. Western Digital was founded in 1970. The company's storage products are marketed to leading systems manufacturers and selected resellers under the Western Digital brand name. Visit the Investor section of the company's Web site (www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of financial and investor information.
Western Digital, WD Caviar and the Western Digital logo are registered trademarks of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. All other brand and product names mentioned herein are the property of their respective owner.
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© Press Release 2004
