WD, Western Digital company leader in storage solutions, has recently released the world’s thinnest 2.5-inch hard drive – The WD Blue and WD Black (MPCK models). It features ultra-slim form factor with only 5mm thickness, first of its kind. It’s also a low power consumption drive, and is built with NoTouch Ramp Load technology, meaning the head will never touch the disk. It’s also built with solid state hybrid drive technology and comes in 500GB of storage capacity. Check out the features, specs, price and where to buy below.
WD BLUE and WD Black Key Features
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. In short these new drives doesn’t use a standard SATA connector.
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.
See also: WD Velociraptor 1TB
WD Blue Specifications
Model: WD5000MPCK
Interface: SATA 6 Gbps
Rotational Speed: 5,400 RPM (nominal)
Buffer Size: 16 MB
Average Latency: 5.50 ms (nominal)
Formatted Capacity: 500,107 MB
Capacity: 500 GB
User Sectors Per Drive: 976,773,168
Dimensions: 5mm x 100.3mm x 69.85mm (HxDxW)
Weight: 74 grams
Read/Write: 1.5 Watts
Idle: 0.55 Watts
Standby: 0.15 Watts
Sleep: 0.15 Watts
WD Black Specifications
Unfortunately, Western Digital did not disclose any detailed specifications regarding the WD Black 5mm SSHD model yet. But according to WD, it’s currently shipping to OEMs and integrators.
See also: WD Black 4TB
Price and Where to Buy
The WD Blue 2.5-inch 5mm HDD with 500GB capacity, model WD5000MPCK, will have a Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) of $89.00 USD and comes with a two-year limited warranty.
However we won’t be seeing them yet on online stores like Amazon or Newegg. These drives are currently going to industrial distributors and major system builders. So, for the question “when will these new ultra slim SSHD become available online?”, I’ll update this once it becomes available.
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