Western Digital has just begun shipping a new 2.5-inch internal hard
drive that’s only a mere 5mm thick. The company is calling it the
UltraSlim, and it packs in 500GB of whatever you can stuff in it. the
new drive will fit in any standard 2.5-inch drive bay, but will take up
less vertical space than a typical 9.5mm drive.
The
drive will be a part of Western Digital’s Blue series of hard drives,
and the 5mm drive is able to be so thin because of a tiny edge connector
that combines both power and the SATA transfer interface, which leaves
more room for the hardware to do its thing. Although, with its 5mm form
factor, everything is squeezed in there rather tightly.
This
marks the return of Western Digital back into the full production
process. After the 2011 tsunami and earthquake over in Asia, Western
Digital and other component manufacturers suffered setbacks and were
unable to produce hard drives temporarily. However, the company got back
on track last year, and took over the top spot in the hard drive market
with $4.8 billion in revenue and 71 million hard drives produced during
Q4 2012.
While the UltraSlim is definitely something to admire,
this isn’t the first 5mm drive we’ve seen. A*STAR unveiled their own 5mm
hybrid drive last year, and it packs in a whole 1TB of storage. Then
again, the company has yet to ship the new drive, so Western Digital is
certainly the first out of the gate it seems.
Western Digital releases 5mm UltraSlim 2.5-inch hard drive is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear. © 2005 - 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
