Until now, the popular trend had been that of expanding the storage space of a hard drive while keeping its size constant. However, with Ultrabooks and other mobile devices hitting the market, hardware vendors are now trying to trim down the size of drives while keeping its storage space constant. For instance, Western Digital has now introduced a 5-mm thick hybrid drive.

The 5-mm thick hybrid drive from Western Digital is quite impressive. Because it combines the power of solid-state drive with the more traditional HDD in such a small size. The SSD part is relatively tiny, which essentially lets the system boot from it, thus making it speedier.

The larger part of the drive comprises of the regular HDD. This way, the 5-mm thick hybrid drive provides great system speeds without being expensive. The minimal thickness of the hybrid drive makes it an ideal option for the ultrabook vendors who are always trying to trim down the waist of their ultrabooks.

Western Digital hasn’t revealed what would be the exact capacity of the MLC NAND Flash that would be a part of this hybrid drive. However, based on the fact that many ultrabooks currently tool 20 GB of 32GB flash drives, we can expect a similar sized NAND Flash to go into the hybrid drive.

However, we don’t expect these hybrid drives to go into commercial use, as being parts of ultrabooks, before 2013. Western Digital has just unveiled these drives and it will take a while for ultrabook vendors to line up and lay their hands on it.

Courtesy: Arstechnica

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