2 TB 2.5-Inch WD Handicapped Hard Drive Available in Japan

Western Digital is struggling to find ways of expanding properly into the solid-state drive business, but HDDs remain its core focus, although it's not all that obvious from this latest move on the company's part.

The new hard drive unit that Western Digital launched was not promoted through some overly bashful press release or video, or anything of the sort.

Upon reviewing what we know of it, we can't say that we are all that surprised that WD didn't shout about it from the rooftops.

All things considered, the WD Green WD20NPVT, as the HDD is called, is more or less useless as far as 2.5-inch units go.

Indeed, the drive boasts the 2.5-inch form factor, which would, theoretically, let it qualify for use in laptops.

But here is the reason why we call it largely useless: it is too thick to fit in most mobile personal computers. To be more specific, the drive measures 15 mm, or 0.59 inches.

At least the capacity is high (2 TB) although the platter speed isn't any more impressive than on normal HDDs. It is variable though (IntelliPower technology): most likely 4,500-5,400 RPM (rotations per minute)

Western Digital no doubt implemented IntelliPower because, since this item is called WD Green WD20NPVT, it needs to save as much energy as possible. Naturally, being capable of decreasing the spindle speed is a boon in that regard.

The rest of the specifications are as follows: a cache memory of 8 MB, the SATA 3.0 Gbps interface (SATA II) and power consumption of 1.7W (0.2W when idle).

Akiba PC Watch, which provided all this information, says that the price in Japanese ground stores is of 18,800 JPY, which corresponds to $240 / 197 Euro.