Lake Forest (CA) – Western Digital (is getting more aggressive in the perpendicular race and today said that it has begun shipping a 2.5” notebook hard drive with the industry’s “highest capacity.”

Announcements of 250 GB notebook hard drive have been making the rounds for sometime. For example, Samsung and Fujitsu recently said that they would be shipping such drives in the first half of the year, but it appears that Western Digital has become the first manufacturer to actually have a 250 GB 2.5” drive in the market.

WD’s new 2.5” Scorpio drive spins its two platters with 5400 rpm and comes and offers proprietary extensions that, according to the manufacturer, allow the device to run quieter and reduce power consumption. “WhisperDrive” is described to result in “one of the quietest 5400 RPM, 2.5” drives available,”  while “IntelliSeek”  calculates an “optimum seek speed” to “eliminate hasty movement of the actuator that produces noise and requires power, which is common in other drives.” Power consumption of the drive is rated at 2.5 watts during read/write processes and at 0.25 watts while in standby mode.

The product’s specifications suggest that the drive will be offering performance that will be on par with other 2.5” drives. Seek times are 12.0 ms, average latency is 4.2 ms, according to the manufacturer.

WD also improved the shock tolerance of the Scorpio drive to meet the “specifications required for mobile and notebook applications,” the company said.

The 250 GB WD Scorpio is offered only as a SATA (1.5 Gb/s) version and currently retails for about $200.

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