Western Digital develops world's thinnest hybrid hard drive

"Mobile devices are becoming smaller, thinner, lighter and more responsive," said Matt Rutledge, vice president of client storage solutions at WD. "Working with our technology partners, WD has developed new 5mm hard drives that enable high capacity storage along with excellent performance and superior economics to allow our customers to expand their thin offerings."

With device volumetric efficiency a key concern for system makers, WD began shipping 7mm height hard drives for thin-profile notebooks earlier this year (historically, standard notebook hard drives have been 9.5mm). WD 5mm hybrid hard drives will enable the market's thinnest computers to offer 500GB of capacity, utilising almost 50% less volume compared to current 9.5mm hard drives and at one tenth the cost of similar capacity SSDs.

A shift in computing world

"Acer is partnering with WD to bring advanced notebook performance and capacity in the smallest form factor," said David Lee, associate vice president of mobile computing product business unit at Acer. "It's a part of our ongoing commitment to present leading technology that ultimately improves the total user experience of our customers."

"We are seeing a shift in the computing world to more powerful mobile computing solutions," said SY Shain, senior vice president of ASUS' notebook business unit. "With this in mind, ASUS and WD are collaborating to create slimmer and more mobile notebook solutions - without sacrificing capacity or performance - to deliver smaller form-factor to consumers."

WD's innovative hybrid technology pairs MLC NAND flash storage for fast SSD-like data throughput and instant-on responsiveness with magnetic disks for efficient, high-capacity storage. Similar to the practice of multi-million dollar enterprise systems, WD's hybrid technology utilises the concept of tiered storage. Data accessed most frequently (often referred to as 'hot' data) is managed using speedy NAND flash to ensure fast response times, while data accessed less often ('cold' data) resides on the robust magnetic disks.

Providing a redundancy benefit

The tiered design of hybrid hard drives, compared to current dual-drive solutions, also provides a redundancy benefit for users. The magnetic disk backs up all files residing in the NAND, protecting the user from inevitable NAND wear and preserving it for the more hot data handling. WD's hybrid technology works in conjunction with the PC operating system to deliver higher performance than current hybrid offerings while minimising NAND wear to allow the use of less expensive MLC NAND.

Hybrid hard drives combine NAND flash and magnetic disks, simplifying storage-element integration for OEM customers and providing a host of end user benefits - superior performance, responsiveness, lower power consumption, greater operating shock tolerance, and data protection. Unlike dual-drive designs, WD's hybrid technology provides single-unit design homogeneity that OEM system manufacturers have long sought from the storage industry.