Western Digital 2.5" Drive Reaches Terabyte Milestone

2.5" hard drive already reaches 1TB, only two years after 3.5" hits the same mark. The credit goes to the Western Digital for bringing this spacious drive to the market in the form of internal and external USB storage. Others like Seagate and Hitachi however won't be far behind. As good as this may sound, the WD Scorpio Blue 2.5" 1TB is 3mm too thick for notebooks, most of which only accept 9.5mm drives.

Even though the Scorpio Blue maybe a tad too big for the majority of laptops, it's perfect for portable USB drives like WD's My Passport Essential SE. While offering twice the size competitors offer, one caveat is that the 1TB as well as its 750GB sibling spins a 5200-rpm, a bit slower than what is usually expected. It's uncertain how this may affect performance, but you can't beat the convenience of carrying around a tetrabyte data in a single USB-powerd enclosure. The drive is also bundled with sync+encryption software. The My Passport Essential SE 750GB and 1TB will join the rest of the family with a MSRP of $199.99 and $299.99.