WD Begins Volume Shipment of 1TB 2.5-inch Notebook HDDs

Until now, the maximum capacity of a notebook hard drive was limited to 750GB and that’s because the 1TB 2.5 hard drives were slightly larger (12.5mm) compared to the industry standard 9.5mm. The primary reason for this was the number of platters had to be more than two, thereby increasing the depth. WD announced today volume shipments of their new Scorpio Blue 1TB hard drives that use just two 500GB platters, which help them maintain the 9.5mm industry standard for notebooks.

Higher capacity in the same form factor

The new Scorpio Blue drives spin at 5400rpm and come with 8MB of cache with the rest of WD’s proprietary features like ShockGuard, Advanced Format support, WhisperDrive, etc. The drives will be priced at U.S $139 (approx Rs.6,255). OEM manufacturers should start using these drives in their high end notebooks in the coming months. So look out for such options the next time you want to upgrade.