First Standard-Height 1TB Laptop HDDs: Samsung Spinpoint M8 HN-M101MBB, WD Scorpio Blue WD10JPVT

Samsung and Western Digital are the first companies to offer 1TB 2.5-inch hard drives that fit in standard laptops.

Previously, if you wanted more than 750GB of storage in a laptop, you had to choose one of usually larger than average notebooks with dual HDD bays. Now it’s possible to get 1TB of capacity in a single-bay laptop, thanks to the Samsung Spinpoint M8 HN-M101MBB and WD Scorpio Blue WD10JPVT.

As opposed to a 12.5mm height of earlier available 2.5″ 1TB hard drives (mostly used in servers), the new disks are 9.5mm high. It’s a standard laptop HDD height, so your upgrade to 1TB will be easy.

Both units consist of dual 500GB platters spinning at 5,400rpm and have almost identical specifications.

Here’s a comparison table for the two drives:

1TB Laptop Hard Drive Model Samsung Spinpoint M8 HN-M101MBB WD Scorpio Blue WD10JPVT
Capacity 1TB
Speed: 5,400rpm
Cache 8MB
Interface SATA2 3Gb/s
Latency 5.6ms 5.5ms
Dimensions 9.5mm x 69.75mm x 100.3mm 9.5mm x 69.75mm x 100.2mm
Price $99.99 $109.99