With the SSD season slowing down, we finally get to break free and spend some time on other storage technology. The mechanical hard drive world has made some advances in recent months. Some of the biggest news has come from companies like Western Digital increasing the platter density on their disks.

The 1TB mark for the 2.5" form factor was hit over a year ago, but all of the early drives used 15mm drive heights with three spinning platters. Western Digital was the first with a 1TB 15mm drive and they are also one of the first with a standard notebook size 1TB drive as well.