Western Digital ships first 5mm hard drive and SSHD

Western Digital has shrunk the hard drive again with a 500GB hard drive that is 5mm think. According to their press release that they are now shipping the first 5mm think hard drive and solid state hybrid drives. These are great for the space consious and slim devices that require something small. What is even better is the fact they have packed up to 500GB of space in these drives.

So you have a comparison of how small that is a current Samsung 840 Pro SSD is currently 7mm thick compared to Western Digital’s 5mm.

Here are the features of these drives:

• 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.
• 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.

 

Overall it looks like Western Digital is innovating by shrinking these drives down in physical size. For all the new slimmed down all in one PCs this will help add valuable space for other components and for the server environment.

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