Western Digital's new drives expand laptop storage to 1TB
Western Digital breaks new ground with its Scorpio Blue SATA laptop hard drives.
14 October 2011 Source: www.computerworld.com
Western Digital (WD) is helping to break new ground with its new Scorpio Blue SATA series of 2.5-in. laptop drives by adding two 1TB models: the 9.5mm-high, 5400rpm WD10JPVT and the 12.5mm-high, 5200rpm WD10TPVT. Both models have an 8MB buffer and are 3Gb/s compatible.
For this article, the shorter 9.5mm WD10JPVT has been reviewed.
Whether you have a Windows- or OS X-based laptop, one glaring flaw in either genre (and in laptops in general) is the capacity of the hard drive. A year ago, it became possible to pump up a desktop computer with a 3TB drive, but your laptop hit a wall at 750GB. And if you are a true media maven, even 750GB could be a bit confining at times for everything you want to store...
...Getting 1TB on a 2.5-inch platter wasn't simple. (Interestingly, the claimed formatted capacity of the drive is a little over 1TB -- 1,000.204GB, to be exact -- not the usual 931GB that marks a 1TB device.) WD achieved it by adjusting the areal density (the number of bits per square inch) and adding Advanced Format technology...
...Switching to the higher-capacity Scorpio Blue, despite its slower rotational speed, is practically a no-lose situation...
...Low data-content files that are typically accessed numerous times -- such as, say, bank or credit records -- are at a slight disadvantage but, as can be seen from the test results, the 1TB Scorpio Blue holds its own with the type of large files associated with streaming and other media-based applications. And since the price of the 1TB drive is about the same as a similar 750GB drive, I strongly recommend it.
View the WD Scorpio Blue range