Western Digital Intros Thinnest Ever 2.5-Inch Hybrid Drive: 5mm

Western Digital will hold its Investor Day on Thursday, but it didn't wait for that particular occasion to announce the world's thinnest hard disk drive with hybrid technology.

Considering how long and verbose the WD press release is, we hoped for at least some specific information about the drive, beyond the thinness of 5mm.

Unfortunately, though the total capacity was, indeed, mentioned, how much NAND space there is was left in the air.

Performance figures were, likewise, not included in the announcement. We will have to wait for September 13 for everything to be clear.

That said, Western Digital is already shipping samples of the drive, and the announcement is meant to celebrate not just that, but also the fact that 5mm is the thinnest hybrid drives have ever been.

"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 5 mm hard drives that enable high capacity storage along with excellent performance and superior economics to allow our customers to expand their thin offerings."

For the sake of comparison, standard notebook HDDs measure 9.5mm in thickness, although WD has been shipping 7mm drives since earlier this year. 5mm hybrid HDDs essentially use almost 50% less space than normal HDDs, and at a tenth of the cost of SSDs.

"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."

Besides ASUS, Acer and other laptop makers, especially ultrabook manufacturers, are bound to adopt 5mm units. Seagate can't be too far behind with its own models.