Internal 750GB and 1TB 2.5" Laptop Hard Drives. Where are they?

I've been on a bit of a hunt for the largest laptop hard drive available, but I've been arriving at dead-ends when trying to find something larger than 640GB.

As far as I know, the 1TB WD10TEVT hasn't truly been released yet. But what about the 750GB version? I thought it was available, but I can't find it in stock anywhere.

There are the external versions available, but the drives inside have the USB connections soldered on, and can't be used internally.

There is also a Seagate 2.5" 750GB external hard drive available, but I'm not sure if the drive inside has a proper SATA connector.



Does anyone have any info on these elusive 750GB+ laptop hard drives?

 

It's avaliable in this form, which *IS* the correct drive, just the wrong controller board. If they wanted to they could release it today. I just don't know why they haven't yet. I personally would rather have a 1tb HDD than a little more speed with a tiny SSD. The dealio with the 750gb drives is that they're 12.5mm whereas some notebooks HDD caddy's will only accept a 9.5mm. It's a little taller because it has 3 platters where the 500's that are out now are 2 platters at 250gb a piece. I'm guessing that the 1tb drive from WD is going to be a 12.5mm drive also whenever it decides to show it's face at newegg.

 

I just got a 250GB OCZ Vertex, and my plan was to have a large 12.5mm drive in the optical bay. But now that I'm looking for one to actually purchase, they don't seem available anywhere.

 

Well, pretty much any laptop drive with 3 platters is usually 12.5. The 640 WD is unusually 9.5. I believe all the 750's are 12.5

 

I've been following this one since July-2009 when there were announced by WD. Up until December I had the 1tb version on order with Amazon, but I ended up canceling the order.

The 750 internal SATA version was available through Newegg for a while, but they are no longer available. I think that Newegg got too many returns because of the 12.5mm height and they just gave up on them. Now they are virtually impossible to get. I wouldn't be too surprised that WD decides not to release the bare drive version out of fear of the returns that would inevitably happen.

As far as the Seagate version goes, I went down that road too and bought the 1tb version inside of an enclosure. Although the drive does have a sata controller the drive is about 15mm in height an even I couldn't use it. I think it has 4 250gb platters. I made a thread about this in this section of the forum last month if you care to see pictures.

I ended up just giving up on them and bought 2 Hitachi 7k500's, which I'm happy with.

 

It's not unusual, the 640GB drive is a 2 platter drive.

 

Where did you get that from? External Drivers are just enclosure plus ordinary SATA drives. There's no soldered USB connections.

 

Not always. Once some companies (like WD) realized that people were buying their pre-built external drives, and then extracting the drives from the cases to put in their computers, they decided to start soldering the interface of the enclosures to the drives, to prevent people from swapping them out. This is also the source of the "proprietary mini-USB port" complaint.

 

Well... Since you mentioned anywhere, the 750GB version has been in stores here in Japan for quite sometime and still is up to this moment.

 

Well at least they're available somewhere.

 

Is it safe to assume that the 880gb seagate drives ( http://www.frys.com/product/6122479) are 12.5mm?

When do you think well see 9.5mm 750gb+ drives?

 

At this point, I'd assume it's 15mm rather than 12.5mm.

It's looking like 9.5mm 750GB+ SSD's might beat 9.5mm 750GB+ HDD's to the market at this rate.

 

CDW has the 750's. The 1tb version is probably not in stock.
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1822575

 

Update: I tried a Seagate 750GB drive; and found out it was 15mm. I thought there was a chance it was a 3 platter drive.

A refund later, I was able to get a 750GB WD 12.5mm drive, seems to work fine:

 

Only 60MB/s, seems to be 3x 250GB.....

 

Yeh, it's definitely not a boot drive. It's not much worse than the WD5000BEVT though.

 

SSDs that size are already available. The reason why you don't see it is mainly cost. If you are able and willing to spend the amount, you can get one made...

 

Yes they are availability and would cost more than most laptops. As for the 750+ HDs. What would you do with all that HD space OP? Granted, I'm a proponent of the philosophy, you can never have too much HD space. But really, you could watch movies 24 hours a day for a week with a 1 tb of storage.

Disclaimer: In actuality, I like his way of thinking since my laptop is being configured for HD editing. And I also love HD movies too!

Everybody's in a hurry! Why can't you just be more like the Slowsky's?