WD Shipping First 1TB 2.5-Inch HDD
Beating again Seagate and all other HDD makers
This is a Press Release edited by StorageNewsletter.com on July 27, 2009 at 3:40 pmWD announced two new mobile hard drives that reach new capacity extremes. The highlight is a one terabyte model – the industry’s highest-capacity 2.5-inch drive available. Industry-leading 333 GB-per-platter technology enables the new WD Scorpio Blue SATA 2.5-inch hard drives to offer mobile storage device and notebook users an enormous 1 TB capacity. A 750 GB WD Scorpio Blue model also will be available.
The WD Scorpio Blue 750 GB and 1 TB hard drives have a 12.5 mm form factor and are ideally suited for use in portable storage solutions, such as the newly released My Passport Essential SE Portable USB Drives. Other applications include select notebooks and small form factor desktop PCs, where quiet and cool operation are important. Both WD Scorpio Blue drives deliver high-performance with a 3 gigabits per second (Gb/s) transfer rate.
"The convergence of the growing mobile computing and digital media trends produces demand for desktop-like capacities in portable devices," said Jim Morris, senior vice president and general manager of client systems at WD. "Our new WD Scorpio Blue drives enable people to take even more of their digital collections with them wherever they go and, realizing the value of their data, back up their notebooks on their My Passport drives."
WD Scorpio Blue hard drives offer high-performance, low power consumption and cool operation in portable applications. They are designed with WD features to be reliable and shock resistant while also delivering industry-leading capacity and performance.
WD Scorpio Blue Features
- WhisperDrive – WD’s exclusive WhisperDrive technology combines state-of-the-art seeking algorithms to produce one of the quietest 2.5-inch drives available.
- ShockGuard – Leading-edge ShockGuard technology combines firmware and hardware advancements to meet the highest combined shock tolerance specifications required for mobile and notebook applications.
- SecurePark – Parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down and when the drive is off. This ensures the recording head never touches the disk surface, resulting in improved long-term reliability due to less head wear and improved shock tolerance.
Price and Availability
WD Scorpio Blue 750 GB drives (model WD7500KEVT) are available now through select distributors and resellers; the 1 TB capacity (model WD10TEVT) is available now configured into My Passport Essential SE USB drives. The manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) for the WD Scorpio Blue 1 TB drive is $249.99 USD and for the 750 GB version it is $189.99 USD. WD Scorpio Blue hard drives are covered by a three-year limited warranty.
Comments
WD is launching and - more than that - said it is shipping the first one-terabyte notebook hard disk drive, here at 5,200rpm (nominal). The company was also the first at 2TB in a 3.5-inch form factor, followed by Seagate.
But, to get this capacity, WD was obliged to use three platters, and not only two as it's usual for notebook units, which means that the height is 12.5mm, not 9.5mm as about all the 2.5-inch HDDs integrated into notebook computers.
Curiously, WD is not offering - up to now - a two-disk version at 9.5mm with 666GB to beat Seagate with 640GB (320GB per platter), the preceding record for a notebook drive.
Hitachi GST, Samsung and Toshiba are only at 500GB for the moment.
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