Last September, Wester Digital announced the world’s first 5mm, 2.5-inch hard drive, and today WD announced it is available for sale.
The world’s thinnest hard drive is called WD Blue, and it’s exciting because it means we’ll be getting thinner laptops in the future. 5mm is about the thickness of a wooden cooking skewer.
It’s a 500GB hybrid drive that pairs MLC NAND flash storage for SSD-like data throughput and instant-on responsiveness with magnetic disks for efficient, high-capacity storage.
Beyond extreme thinness, the WD Blue offers several new innovations:
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 .
StableTrac™ – 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.
Dual Stage Actuator – 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.
WD Blue is shipping today to distributers and device makers with a suggested price of $89.
This video isn’t about the WD Blue, but it is about Western Digital ‘s hybrid drive technology.
