WD ships industry's first 2.5-inch 1TB hard drive

After being snubbed by Hitachi in the race to push out the industry's first 1TB desktop hard drive, Western Digital made darn sure it was first to ship a 2TB version. Now, the company is raising its fists in celebration once more with the introduction of the sector's first 2.5-inch 1TB mobile hard drive. 'Course, this isn't the first 1TB drive of any kind in this size, as that honor goes to none other than pureSilicon and its ultra-spacious 1TB SSD. Still, we recall thinking that a drive of this capacity wouldn't hit until 2010 at best, so we're steadfastly elated to hear that the Scorpio Blue 1TB (and Scorpio Blue 750GB) are shipping now to retailers. Of course, we can't help but gripe that both of these boast unorthodox 12.5mm form factors, which dwarfs the standard 9.5mm-height slot found in most laptops, but hey, progress is progress -- right? With that in mind, it's easy to see why both of these are being marketed hard in the external HDD market, with each unit slated to ship within a My Passport SE for $189.99 (750GB) or $249.99 (1TB). The full release is after the break.

WD SHIPS INDUSTRY'S FIRST 1 TB MOBILE HARD DRIVE

New Drives Offer the Highest Capacities to Date For Mobile Storage Applications and Notebooks

LAKE FOREST, Calif. – July 27, 2009 - WD (NYSE: WDC) today 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. More information about WD Scorpio Blue mobile hard drives may be found on the company's Web site at http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=685.

About WD
WD, one of the storage industry's pioneers and long-time leaders, provides products and services for people and organizations that collect, manage and use digital information. The company designs and produces reliable, high-performance hard drives and solid state drives that keep users' data accessible and secure from loss. Its advanced technologies are configured into applications for client and enterprise computing, embedded systems and consumer electronics, as well as its own consumer storage and media products.

WD was founded in 1970. The company's storage products are marketed to leading OEMs, systems manufacturers, selected resellers and retailers under the Western Digital® and WD® brand names. Visit the Investor section of the company's Web site (www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of financial and investor information.
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Western Digital, WD, the WD logo and WD Scorpio are registered trademarks in the U.S. and other countries; Blue, My Passport, Essential, SecurePark, ShockGuard and WhisperDrive are trademarks of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. All other trademarks herein are property of their respective owner. As used for storage capacity, one megabyte (MB) = one million bytes, one gigabyte (GB) = one billion bytes, and one terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment. As used for transfer rate or interface, megabyte per second (MB/s) = one million bytes per second, and gigabit per second (Gb/s) = one billion bits per second.