Western Digital on Wednesday shipped its first 1TB notebook drive thin enough to fit most portables. An upgraded Scorpio Blue measures 9.5mm tall and is thin enough that a MacBook Pro or most other thinner but regular-sized notebooks can take the capacity. The slimming down comes through fitting 500GB per platter and cutting out the third platter that had been needed on earlier drives.
Western Digital today joined the ranks of those making thin 750GB mobile drives with an upgrade to the Scorpio Blue. Like its Toshiba cousin, the 2.5-inch SATA II drive fits its 750GB into two platters and can fit into a typical 9.5mm (0.37in) height used by most notebooks, including thin-and-lights. Most slimmer notebook drives have stopped at 640GB.
Western Digital this morning began shipping the 640GB Scorpio Blue, one of the first drives above 500GB to fit in most notebooks. It uses two 320GB platters to reach its capacity while still measuring 9.5mm thick and thus thin enough to fit in particularly slim portables like the MacBook Pro. As a Blue series drive, it's aimed at the mainstream and spins at 5,400RPM with an 8MB cache.
Western Digital on Friday began shipping the 500GB Scorpio Blue, the company's largest-capacity notebook drive. Claiming a record in the process, Western Digital says the disk is the only one to make no sacrifices in size or speed to reach its storage goal. The Serial ATA drive is as tall as normal notebook hard drives at 9.5mm (0.37in) and spins at the same 5,400RPM as most other 2.5-inch disks. Quietness is also considered paramount with an optimized seeking process cutting down on the noise generated by the drive head.
Western Digital started the week by shipping the 320GB Scorpio Black, its largest-capacity high-speed drive. The 2.5-inch Serial ATA drive enters the increasingly competitive arena of performance notebook drives and includes specs that are normally reserved for desktop drives, including a 7,200RPM spin rate and 16MB of cache to reduce the need for disk access. It also touts measures to protect against damage from the read head; a safe parking technique avoids damage when the drive is switched off, while the more common addition of a free-fall sensor keeps the head away from the magnetic surface in the event of a drop.
