Western Digital: 1TB mobile drive launched

Approximately two and a half years ago we saw the first Terabyte sized hard disk drive emerge, now we are seeing the World’s first Terabyte 2.5 inch drive emerge. The drive is called the WD (Western Digital) Scorpio Blue 1TB.

To gain this storage capacity a lot of work had to be carried out, to fit three platters into the drive they had to increase the height of the drive from 9.5mm to 12.5mm, one major issue with the drive having an increased height is that it is not compatible with devices designed for 9.5mm devices.

The new drive uses a SATA interface which allows transfer rates of up to 3.0Gbps, it also uses a non standard 5200RPM spindle speed. It is thought that this drive will mostly be used in portable external drives rather than in netbooks and laptops and it is expected to be available now for around $250.

While it is an achievement fitting 1TB of storage into such a small form factor, I feel the real achievement will be fitting the 1TB into a standard 9.5mm height drive, which going on previous experiences could be a year away. Check out the full article on arstechnica.