WD® Ships Slim, Energy-Efficient Hard Drive for Ultrabook™ Devices

New 7 mm 2.5-inch Mobile Hard Drive Delivers Lowest Power Consumption in the Industry

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Apr 11, 2012, 07:57 ET

IRVINE, Calif., April 11, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Western Digital® (NYSE: WDC), a worldwide storage leader, today announced it is shipping the WD Scorpio® Blue™ 7 mm hard drive, the latest addition to its mobile hard drive family and the 2.5-inch drive with the lowest power consumption on the market today. Specified to a best-in-class 400Gs shock tolerance, the new single-platter WD Scorpio Blue small form factor hard drives are available in 500 GB and 320 GB capacities and the drives' compatibility with industry-standard 9.5 mm slots make them ideal storage options for mainstream notebooks as well as slimmer notebook and Ultrabook^™ devices that require a 7 mm drive height.

"Consumers want thin and light personal computers, but the limited storage capacity of SSD-based notebooks forces them to pick and choose what files to bring from their library," said Matt Rutledge, vice president and general manager for WD client storage products. "With the release of the new WD Scorpio Blue 7 mm mobile hard drives, WD is able to offer capacity, reliability and data-protection features combined with excellent power management all in a slim form factor perfect for thin and light notebooks."

Features of the new WD Scorpio Blue 7 mm hard drives include:

Low power consumption - Advanced power management features and algorithms optimize the way the drive seeks data, which significantly improves power consumption.
Shock Tolerance – WD's ShockGuard™ technology, now increased to a best-in-market 400Gs shock specification, protects the drive mechanics and platter surfaces from shocks.
Cool and quiet - In a notebook drive, silence is golden. WD's exclusive WhisperDrive™ technology enables quiet performance.
Reliable – WD's SecurePark™ parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down, and when the drive is off. This ensures the recording head never touches the disk surface resulting in improved long term reliability due to less head wear, and improved non-operational shock tolerance.
Compatibility Tested - WD performs tests on hundreds of systems and a multitude of platforms in its FIT Lab™ and Mobile Compatibility Lab to give customers confidence that drives will work in specific systems.

Price and Availability

Shipping now through select distributors and resellers, the WD Scorpio Blue 7 mm 2.5-inch mobile hard drives are covered by a two-year limited warranty. MSRP for the 500 GB, model #: WD5000LPVT is $99.99 USD and the 320 GB, model #: WD3200LPVT is $79.99 USD. Additional information about WD Scorpio Blue hard drives and limited warranty terms may be found on the company website at http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=140.

About WD

WD, a storage industry pioneer and long-time leader, provides products and services for people and organizations that collect, manage and use digital information. The company designs and produces reliable, high-performance hard drives and solid state drives that keep users' data accessible and secure from loss. Its storage technologies serve a wide range of host applications including client and enterprise computing, embedded systems and consumer electronics, as well as its own storage systems. Its home entertainment products enable rich engagement with stored digital content.

WD was founded in 1970. The company's products are marketed to leading OEMs, systems manufacturers, selected resellers and retailers under the Western Digital®, WD® and HGST™ brand names. Visit the Investor section of the company's website (www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of financial and investor information.

Western Digital, WD, the WD logo and WD Scorpio are registered trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries; WD Scorpio Blue, SecurePark, ShockGuard, WhisperDrive and FIT Lab are trademarks of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. Ultrabook is a trademark of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other brand and product names mentioned herein are property of their respective companies. As used for storage capacity, one gigabyte (GB) = one billion bytes; one terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment.

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SOURCE Western Digital Technologies