Monday, August 3, 2009

Western Digital Unveils 1TB, 750GB Notebook Drives

Western Digital on Monday released its new 1-Tbyte and 750-Gbyte WD Scorpio Blue 2.5-inch internal SATA hard drives.
Both drives are in the 12.5-mm form factor, so they will fit in notebooks and small form factor desktops. The new 1TB capacity doubles the 500GB capacity that had become the large capacity standard for 2.5-inch hard drives. They also deliver a high performance 3Gb per second transfer rate.
The 750GB WD Scorpio Blue internal drive is available now for $189.99 and the 1TB version will be available for $249.99.
Both can be purchased as external USB 2.0 drives as part of WD's Passport Essential SE line for $299.99 (1TB) and $199.99 (750GB). They have WD features like WhisperDrive for quiet use, drop resistant ShockGuard, and SecurePark for more shock tolerance.
The internal and external drives show that users are still clamoring for more and more storage, especially with the prevalence of smartphones and digital cameras that can capture video. These drives mean that you don't have to forego insane amounts of storage just because you have a laptop.
Because of the current price point, and since the drive is 12.5mm, it's unlikely you'll see them in netbooks, but you may eventually see them in high-end nettops, or more likely in small form factor systems like the Apple Mac mini.

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