Western Digital Rolls Out First 1TB Laptop HHD

It certainly didn't take long for somebody to roar past Toshiba's short-lived record of 500GB for the largest available laptop storage capacity, announced on May 14.

Western Digital on July 27 introduced two new laptop drives that knocked Toshiba's Portege R600-ST4203 solid-state laptop out of the No. 1 spot: the WD Scorpio Blue drives, available in both 750GB and 1TB capacities.

The Scorpio Blue 1TB is now the 2.5-inch laptop disk drive with the world's largest capacity. How long will it hold the title? Probably not for long. Both spinning disk and solid-state storage capacities have been rising so quickly—thanks to improved engineering and better use of materials—that a new standard is reported about every four to six months.

Hitachi was the first manufacturer to bring a 1TB drive to market last year—and beat Western Digital to the punch—but that one works in desktop machines only. Currently, the largest desktop hard drive now available is 2TB—from both Western Digital and Hitachi.

Analyst Parm Mann of Hexus.net wrote that he wonders how practical the new Western Digital Scorpio Blue 1TB will be. It may not fit in many current notebooks.

"First and foremost, the drive itself measures 12.5mm in height due to its capacity, and finds itself too thick for the majority of existing notebooks—many of which use the traditional 69.85mm x 100mm x 9.5mm form factor," Mann wrote in his blog.

The drive is being initially marketed as an external mobile storage package and is now available in retail as the USB-powered My Passport Essential SE 1TB, priced at $300. The 750GB model is priced at $200.