Western Digital rolls out 1TB notebook drive

Storage firm Western Digital has unveiled its first 1 terabyte notebook drive.

The company said that the 2.5 inch Scorpio Blue SATA drive would be targeted for both notebooks and portable storage systems as well as compact desktop systems.

In addition to the larger capacity, Western Digital said that the new drive also features a lower power consumption, lower operating temperature and better shock and disk damage protections.

The convergence of the growing mobile computing and digital media trends produces demand for desktop-like capacities in portable devices," said Western Digital senior vice president and general manager of client systems Jim Morris.

"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."

Also unveiled Monday was a 750GB notebook drive. The company has already begun shipping both models at a price of $249.99 for the 1TB model and $189.99 for the 750 GB drive.

Western Digital's new disk-based drives could bring attention back to a notebook hard drive market that has seen much of the spotlight taken by solid-state drives. Last week, Intel announced a major price drop in its solid-state hard drives.

Due to the higher capacity and lower cost of production, however, most manufacturers and analysts believe that traditional disk-based drives will remain dominant for the foreseeable future.