Western Digital one ups Toshiba on laptop HDDs

Toshiba probably thought it was pretty sneaky claiming to lead the industry with a two-platter, 750 GB laptop hard disk drive, but now Western Digital has come over the top with a matching drive that's available today.

WD announced the 750 GB, 2.5-inch Scorpio Blue hard drive for $150 through "select retailers." That's less than a week after Toshiba unveiled its MK7559GSXP, which still lacks a price and a ship date.

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The drives are otherwise pretty similar. Both have SATA interfaces that transfer at 3 gigabits per second, and spin at 5,400. Using two platters, they both measure 9.5 mm tall, allowing them to fit in most laptops, and they're equipped with quiet-running technology that supposedly eliminates noise when seeking.

Toshiba and WD also both use a new kind of hard drive formatting, dubbed Advanced Format Structure by WD, that stores more bytes in each sector and cuts down on the amount of space occupied by error correction and sync operations, resulting in a more memory-dense drive.

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WD's drive has some extra perks like ShockGuard and SecurePark, which keeps the recording heads off the disk surface during spin-up, spin-down and when the drive is off. It also comes with a three-year warranty.

Perhaps the announcement will give Toshiba a kick in the pants so the company will at least announce a price and release date. Or maybe Toshiba was waiting for this news so it could one-up WD again with a less expensive drive. It's all good either way.

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