The 2.5-inch hard drive is the standard used by small laptops and other small computing devices. Even game consoles like the PS3 and upcoming PS4 use them. The only problem is that these devices can’t take advantage of 1.5TB and 2TB 2.5-inch drives because they’re too tall. Samsung is fixing all of that today.

Seagate’s Samsung HDD division announced today that it’s shipping the new 2.5-inch Spinpoint M9T to OEMs and retail. The drives are only 9.5mm tall and come in 1.5TB and 2TB flavors. It’s a major win for those who want more storage in smaller devices as 2TB 2.5-inch hard drives generally come in at 15mm tall and that’s much too tall for the drive bays of laptops and game consoles.

“The M9T combines the highest areal density shipping in a single storage device with an innovative design that fits into mainstream notebook applications. While other 2TB are solutions on the market are 15 mm thick, the vast majority of mobile devices are designed to use a 9.5 mm drive; with the M9T, those devices can now have 2TB of storage, enabling a richer computing experience,” said Dave Frankovich, senior product line manager, Samsung HDD.

As was the case with Samsung’s Spinpoint M8 drives, the M9T features a 5400 RPM spin speed, SATA 6Gb/s interface support, SilentSeek and NoiseGuard. There’s no price available for the drives just yet, but I’d ballpark the 2TB drive around $200.

The Spinpoint M9T is a pretty big deal for laptops, but it’s an even bigger deal for PS4 owners. Sony uses the SATA 2.5-inch HDD standard for its next home console, but the company is shipping the PS4 with a measly 500GB HDD. Many PS4 games will require upwards of 50GB to be installed to the HDD and that will take up all your space pretty quickly. With these new drives, you’ll be able to store up to four times the amount of games than what’s possible on a 500GB HDD.

If you don’t need that kind of storage right away, you also might want to wait. Other HDD vendors will no doubt come out with their own 9.5mm 2TB HDD solutions next year to compete with Samsung, and those drives might just end up being cheaper.

[Image: Seagate/BusinessWire]