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'THINNEST EVER' spinning terabyte beauty slips out of WD fabs

Size-zero drive packs a whopping 143GB per millimetre

WD says it is shipping the thinnest terabyte drive ever, giving thin and light notebook suppliers and users 143GB of capacity* per millimetre of drive thickness.

The WD Blue drive is 7mm thick (0.28in) and has, we understand, one or two 500GB platters inside it depending on the capacity levels offered – these range between 250GB, 320GB, 500GB, 750GB and 1TB – with two platters being needed for the 750GB and 1TB levels.

Think of an UltraSlim Blue with the two platters and a 2mm thicker enclosure.

The ever so slightly fatter Blue has the now usual roster of features to keep it spinning and working to deliver the data bits you need:-

  • ShockGuard to stop knocks disabling it
  • StableTrac with the motor shaft secured at both ends so it doesn't spin like a top
  • Dual Stage Actuators to position the head with a one (coarse) two (fine) positioning sequence over a track
  • Ramp load to prevent the head touching the disk's surface.

The Blue has a 3Gbit/s or 6Gbit/s SATA interface and spins at 5,400rpm. Blue is WD's mainstream, everyday brand, with Green being reserved for its cooler and quieter drives and Black for higher performance platters.

Acer and ASUS are probably going to ship products using the new Blue, judging by supporting statements from them in WD's release. Intel also blathers on about how great the Blue is for Ultrabooks with Haswell processors; Roger Bradford, its capabilities marketing manager, says: "The release of the WD Blue 7mm hard drives offers a new level of storage capacity that further enriches the computing experience for users of Ultrabooks, All-in-Ones and other thin and light PCs."

If you fancy further enrichment, the new Blue has a 2-year warranty and WD says it's good for 600,000 load/unload cycles.

You can get the 1TB model (WD10SPCXX) for a suggested list price of $139.00 and it's shipping now. Take a look at the spec sheet on Western Digital's website. ®

Bootnote

* 1TB = 1000GB. The Blue is 7mm thick, so 1000 / 7 = 142.86GB per mm of drive thickness.

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