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WD Shipping World's First 5mm 2.5-Inch Hard Drive

By Joy Hou - on 24 Apr 2013, 6:20pm

WD Shipping World's First 5mm 2.5-Inch Hard Drive

WD has announced it is shipping the world's first ultra-slim 2.5-inch, 5mm hard drives and solid state hybrid drives (SSHD), which are designed for integration into the slimmest devices and space-constrained computing environments. With 500GB of storage capacity and models with high performance-enabling solid state hybrid drive technology, this slim product line helps to address the tradeoffs system designers often make between capacity, physical size and performance.

Image source: WD.

The new WD Blue and WD Black 5mm drives are aimed to increase internal storage capacity while enabling it to fit into smaller device slots. In addition, the slimmer and more portable the device, the more vulnerable the hard drive is to user-induced stress. To combat this, WD has designed key enablers to the 5mm form factor:-

Ultra-slim Form Factor – 5mm 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% compared with a standard 9.5mm drive.

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 5mm 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.

With a capacity of 500GB, the WD Blue 2.5-inch 5mm hard drives (model: WD5000MPCK) are covered by a two-year limited warranty, and are priced at US$89 each. WD Black SSHD versions are currently shipping to OEM's and integrators with both WD proprietary hybrid technology and industry standard SATA I/O technology.

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