Western Digital beings shippinh 2.5 inch 320 GB hard-drives

Lake Forest (CA) – Western Digital (WD) today said that it has begun shipping its 2.5” Scorpio SATA hard drives with a capacity of 320 GB.

The new drives are built in a 9.5 mm form factor aim to attract customers in the notebook and portable storage devices segment. WD claims that the devices include “proprietary features that make the drive extraordinarily quiet while running at cool operating temperatures.”

While the drives are equipped with a 3 Gb/s SATA interface, they operate at a platter rotations peed of 5400 rpm and will be targeting the higher end of the mainstream market as a result. Features integrated in the drive include the company’s “WhisperDrive”, “ShockGuard” and “IntelliSeek” technology.

Pricing has not been announced.

Toshiba also rolled out a new series of 2.5” drives. For the retail market, the company is offering a new 250 GB 2.5” USB 2.0 portable storage device ; there is also a new series of internal notebook hard drives available in 80GB, 160GB, 200GB and 250GB capacities for mobile PC upgrades.

The 250 GB portable storage model will be available in retail stores for about $190, a 200 GB versions will sell for $170.