Western Digital have just recently announced that they're now shipping their latest RE2 (RAID edition) 500GB SATA drives which sport 16MB cache, NCQ, and a 3.0Gb/sec transfer rate.

Stacks of info on the new drives can be obtained within this PDF formatted product sheet, as well as a media (powerpoint) presentation and of course the official PR over at WD's press room folks.

LAKE FOREST, Calif. - Apr. 4, 2006 - Addressing a growing enterprise market for high capacity, highly reliable storage, Western Digital Corp. (NYSE: WDC) today announced it is now shipping its WD RE2 (RAID Edition) 500 GB SATA hard drives. With 3.0 Gb/s data transfer rate, WD RE2 hard drives feature Native Command Queuing (NCQ) and 16 MB cache for improved performance in multi-user, random I/O environments. WD RE2 hard drives are designed for network attached storage, direct attached server storage and video surveillance environments that require 100 percent duty cycle and carry a 5-year limited warranty.