Following an earlier announcement about its slimmest 500GB drives, Western Digital today announced what it says is the world's thinnest 1TB laptop hard drive, the WD Blue 7 mm-high hard drive.
WD, which made the announcement at Computex in Taipei, said the 2.5-in.-wide hard drive will be marketed for thin and light systems notebooks. The drive is also compatible with industry-standard 9.5 mm-high drive slots of mainstream notebooks.
The 7mm WD Blue comes in capacities ranging from 320 GB to 1 TB.
The WD Blue 7mm high laptop drive
Most 2.5-in. laptop drives are 9.5mm or 7mm high and have two platters.
In June, Western Digital announced what it called the world's slimmest laptop drive series, a 5mm-high drive with up to 500GB of capacity. That new drive series included the 5mm WD Blue hard disk drive and the 5mm WD Black SSHD (solid-state hybrid drive), which combines NAND flash with traditional spinning disk.
With regard to the 7mm, 1TB drive line, Roger Bradford, capabilities marketing manager at Intel, said with the arrival of Intel's fourth-generation core processor family (code-named Haswell), there will be significant performance gains in both desktop and notebook platforms, requiring greater storage capabilities.
"The release of the WD Blue 7 mm 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," Bradford stated in a news release.
WD is shipping the 7mm, 1TB WD Blue through its distributors and resellers. The drive comes with a two-year limited warranty and has a retail price of $139.00.
This article, WD ships its slimmest 1TB laptop hard drive, was originally published at Computerworld.com.
Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at @lucasmearian or subscribe to Lucas's RSS feed. His e-mail address is lmearian@computerworld.com.
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