Western Digital on Monday expanded the size of laptop hard-drive choices. It offered Scorpio Blue drives with capacities of 750 gigabytes and one terabyte. Until now, the largest laptop drive available was 500GB.
The new 2.5-inch drives are the first to use 333GB-per-platter technology. While the new drives support SATA2, they are 12.5 millimeters thick, which means they won’t fit in all laptops.
Western Digital says the new drives are perfect for portable storage. Both drives will be available in Western Digital’s new My Passport Essential SE Portable USB drive.
The new drives will come with Western Digital’s WhisperDrive technology for quiet operation. They also will have ShockGuard for drop resistance, and SecurePark, which keeps the recording heads off the disk surface.
Both drives will have an 8MB buffer and a speed of 5,200 rpm.
The 750MB drive costs $189.99 and is available now. Currently, the 1TB drive is only available as part of the My Passport USB drive for $299.99.