With the introduction of its Scorpio 2.5” hard drives some time ago, Western Digital served notice that they were back in this market segment to stay. Western Digital has further strengthened their 2.5” hard drive line up with the intro of the new Scorpio Black 7200 RPM 2.5-inch hard drive product line.

Traditionally, the 7200 RPM 2.5-inch hard drive market segment has been dominated primarily by Hitachi, who was the first to market with a 2.5” 7200 RPM hard drive. Seagate joined the 7200 RPM 2.5” hard drive fray next with the Momentus 7200 2.5” hard drive offerings. Now, Western Digital will get into the act with the new Scorpio Black product line.

In the past, the capacity of the 7200 RPM 2.5” performance hard drives has lagged behind the 5400 RPM counterparts. This has been due to a variety of factors. With the introduction of the Scorpio Black product line, WD is launching 7200 RPM performance hard drives that offer both the performance and capacity that is the same as their 5400 RPM offers, which is an astounding 320GB.

The Scorpio Black series will feature SATA 3 Gb/s interface, as well as 16MB of cache, in addition to efficient power usage that is among the best in class. Of course, the Scorpio Black line will feature WD’s best known technologies such as IntelliSeek, SecurPark, ShockGuard, Free-fall Sensor, and WhisperDrive.

The Scorpio Black family will launch immediately and be available through select resellers and distributors. The 320GB model of the Scorpio Black drive will carry a MSRP of US$249. The Scorpio Black family will be available in 80GB, 120GB, 160GB, 250GB, as well as the monster 320GB size. All capacities will be available with or without the free-fall sensor.