WD ships first 1 TB 2.5 inch mobile hard drive

WD has two new mobile hard drives that reach new capacity extremes. The company is highlighting its new one terabyte model - the industry's highest-capacity 2.5-inch drive available.

With 333 GB-per-platter technology, the new new WD Scorpio Blue SATA 2.5-inch hard drives offer mobile storage device and notebook users 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 drives feature WD's WhisperDrive technology that combines state-of-the-art seeking algorithms to produce one of the quietest 2.5-inch drives available. It also comes with ShockGuard, a technology combineing firmware and hardware advancements to meet the highest combined shock tolerance specifications required for mobile and notebook applications.

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 US$249.99 and for the 750 GB version it is US$189.99 USD.