Beating archrival Seagate to the punch, disk drive maker Western Digital has begun shipping the WD Scorpio Blue, the industry's first 1-TB, 2.5-inch hard drive and the highest capacity disk drive for mobile devices.
Western Digital is also shipping a 750-GB version of the drive.
The two WD Scorpio Blue SATA drives are targeted for use in portable storage devices and notebooks, and designed to meet the demands created by increased storage of digital media in portable devices, said Jim Morris, senior vice president and general manager of client systems at WD, in a statement.
Western Digital is setting the manufacturer's suggested retail price for the 1-TB and 750-GB drives at $249.99 and $189.99, respectively. The drives have a 12.5mm form factor and offer a 3 Gigabits-per-second data transfer rate. The 1-TB model uses three 333-GB platters.
The WD Scorpio Blue drives incorporate Western Digital's WhisperDrive technology for quiet operation, ShockGuard firmware and hardware technology to meet shock-tolerance specifications in portable devices, and SecurePark which parks recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down and when the drive is off to ensure it never touches the disk surface.
The company also unveiled new My Passport Essential SE Portable USB drives with 1-TB and 750-GB capacities. The 1-TB drive is priced at $299.99 while the 750-GB model is priced at $199.99.
