Western Digital has just announced that it is now shipping the world’s first ultra-slim 2.5-inch hard drives and solid state hybrid drives. These drives, which are intended for the extremely slim devices whose internal dimensions are sorely constrained, are an amazing five (5) mm thick. With 500GB of storage and models with high performance-enabling hybrid technology, this product line helps address the tradeoffs designers have to make between capacity, physical size and read/write speeds.
“With the launch of our new WD Blue™ 5 mm ultra slim hard drives and our WD Black™ SSHD products, currently shipping to OEMs, WD is delivering to our customers a variety of solutions that maximize storage capacity and volumetric efficiency, as well as performance and system responsiveness, for consumers,” said Matt Rutledge, vice president of WD’s client computing business unit. “Our engineering team took a clean-sheet approach with 5 mm to deliver an ultra-thin hard drive that enables a world of possibilities and applications for mobile computing and beyond.”
Key to the drives are five key features that give it an edge over the competition.
The drives give users and designers an Ultra-slim Form Factor. 5 mm height with compact connector offers system designers a greater degree of chassis design freedom. This ultra-slim form factor reduces weight by up to 36 percent compared with a standard 9.5 mm drive. The WD drives have achieved best-in-class Acoustics and Shock. WD’s best-in-class acoustics use technologies that reduce noise when the drive is active or idle. The WD Blue and WD Black 5 mm drives deliver unprecedented operation and non-operation shock specifications with 400 G and 1000G, respectively. Edge Card Technology: WD designed the connector and board utilizing cell phone miniaturization technology to maximize the mechanical sway space in the hard drive and ensure shock performance.
Edge Card Connector – WD Blue 5 mm hard drives also feature the first application of a new small form factor SFF-8784 edge connector. This new connector receives power from and interfaces with the host I/O bus via the SATA interface connector SFF-8784. The drives also feature WD’s trademarked StableTrac technology. The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking during read and write operations which enables consistently higher performance.These ultra-thin WD drives also have a Dual Stage Actuator. These leading-edge enterprise dual stage actuators provide two actuators that improve positional accuracy over the data track(s). The primary actuator provides coarse displacement using conventional electromagnetic actuator principles. The secondary actuator uses piezoelectric motion to fine tune the head positioning to a higher degree of accuracy.
The drives are available at a suggested retail price of PHP 3,995 for the 500GB WD Blue 2.5-inch 5mm drives, and come with a two year warranty.
To learn more about the products, head over to THIS link.