Who makes the drive inside the casing though? Is this a Verbatim own drive?

The drive is essentially a 2.5" drive in an enclosure, why's no-one tried opening it up, looking at the interfaces and seeing if it can work in a notebook, it'd be miles apart from WD's paltry offering of 320GB Scorpio's, less than a third of what desktop hard drives are.

European company? isn't that company chinese? (and known to me for their not so great quality blank media for many years now)
Looked it up: "Verbatim(R) Corporation, a Mitsubishi Kagaku Media Company, is an international organization"
And:
For more information, contact Verbatim at 1200 W.T. Harris Boulevard, Charlotte, NC 28262
Not what I'd dub 'european' myself at least.