Western Digital Releases New Family of Hard Drives

Western Digital, one of the largest manufacturers of storage solutions, has announced today that it is now shipping a new line of WD Scorpio hard disk drives. The WD Scorpio Black HDDs are based on 2.5-inch SATA interface and will provide a platter rotational speed of 7200 RPM. According to the company, the new products are designed for high-performance notebook computers and portable storage devices. Models from the above mentioned series will include a high capacity version, offering 320GB of storage space.

The Western Digital's Scorpio Black family is destined for OEM notebooks systems, but the products can also be used by users looking to upgrade their storage solution. Upgrading a notebook computer with one of the WD Scorpio Black HDDs will improve the storage speed and performance of the portable system.

"In today's busy and on-the-go lifestyle, notebook systems play an increasingly pivotal role in the home office and are relied upon to efficiently run sophisticated applications," said Jim Morris, WD's vice president and general manager of mobile storage.

The new HDD series will benefit from some of Western Digital's exclusive features, including IntelliSeek, SecurePark, ShockGuard, Free-fall Sensor and WhipserDrive. All these technologies are meant to protect the hard from any accidents and to make it a better performer while keeping the noise level as low as possible.

The new WD Scorpio Black hard drives are going to be available at select distributors and resellers. The MSRP for these drives will not be higher than $250.

Western Digital's new products will become available after Seagate, which is the main competitor for Western Digital, will release its SSD hard drives in 2009. The Seagate drives are going to provide storage support for business users. The release will also include a 2TB normal hard drive.