Western Digital on Wednesday introduced two new hard disk drives that are designed specifically for ultra-slim notebooks. The company believes that new WD Scorpio Blue LPVT-series 7mm HDDs are the lowest power consumption on the market today, but they still consume a lot more energy than solid-state drives and deliver lower performance.

The new WD Scorpio Blue LPVT-series 2.5"/7mm hard drives are available in 250GB, 300GB and 500GB capacities. The new product family is based on one platter, has 5400rpm spindle speed, 8MB cache and uses Serial ATA-300 interface. The manufacturer claims that the new Scorpio Blue LPVT-series HDDs are specified for best-in-class 400Gs operating shock tolerance (up from 350Gs of competing offerings) and also consume just 1.4W during read/write operations, 0.55W in idle and 0.13W in sleep or standby modes.

Power consumption of up to 1.4W is lower compared to other WD Scorpio Blue 2.5" drives (BPVT-series) and seems to be in line with that of low-power 2.5"/7mm 5400rpm Seagate Momentus offerings that are available only in up to 320GB capacities. Still, modern 2.5" solid-state drives, which may offer 850mW power consumption and better responsiveness than hard disk drives, albeit at much higher price.

Shipping now through select distributors and resellers, the WD Scorpio Blue LPVT-series 2.5"  mobile hard drives are covered by a two-year limited warranty. The recommended pricing for the 500GB is $99.99 and the 320GB should cost $79.99.

"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. With the release of the new WD Scorpio Blue 7mm 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," said Matt Rutledge, vice president and general manager for WD client storage products.

Tags: WD, Scorpio, Scorpio Blue, HDD