A couple of weeks ago, folks at Think Big Events lent me one of Western Digital’s latest offerings in the form of the UltraSlim WD Blue 500GB
To give you a better understanding of just how stunted this item is, I matched it up with calling cards… if you have 18 with you then you have the actual height of the miniscule device.
As you can see above it is also just about half the height of regular 2.5” drives that are currently being used for notebooks. This difference in profiles make it the ideal partner for mobile devices which are all the rage today and in the forseeable future… this’d be especially advantageous to Windows powered devices.
I was able to try it out and it registers just like a regular drive, I did have to connect it to an external drive enclosure to interface it with a machine. Imagine when they come out with a Black edition of this one that would really provide plenty of space and speed. It also interfaces using a different set of pins that end up as the regular SATA that we are used to.
This drive was extremely quiet while it was connected and wasn’t giving off heat when I picked it up after which is very important for manufacturers to consider it during device development. I’d say this type of design can be advantageous to modders as well if and when they’re going for cases that are compact. It is also different because it does not have the “do not cover this hole” warning that is very prominent on 2.5” drives.
It must truly be a feat of engineering to be able to reduce the components further and sandwich it into a fully functional HDD. Being able to carry hundreds of gigabytes inside a tablet and not in your pocket (wifi enabled drives also from WD), or with a need for cables, that is a future definitely on the horizon with this technology. Creds to WD for such a development.