WD Ships Scorpio Black Notebook Drives

By Geoff Duncan Published June 2, 2008

Western Digital is now shipping its WD Scorpio Black hard drives for notebook computers, offering 7,200 rpm spin rates, a 16 MB cache, and capacities of up to 320 GB on a 3Gb/s SATA interface.

The Scorpio Black drives also incorporate data protection and reliability technologies designed to increase the drives’ lifespan in the oft-jarring mobile computing world. The drives incorporate a free-fall sensor that parks the drive heads in less than a fifth of a second if the drive detects it has begun falling. The drives also incorporate WD’s ShockGuard technology to protect the drive and platters during everyday operation, and SecurePark technology that keeps the heads away from the during spinup and spindown. The mechanisms also include WD’s IntelliSeek technology to lower seek times and WhisperDrive to keep the mechanism’s ambient noise to a minimum. WD claims the drives have an average read seek time of 12 ms, an average latency of 5.5 ms, and emit 22 to 25 db of noise during idle and seek modes.

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The Scorpio Black drives are available in capacities from 80 to 320 GB, with the 320 GB model carrying a suggested price tag of $249.

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