WD at Computex 2013 Booth Tour Day 1 - Hard Drive Race Car & WD Giveaway
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
798 words · ~3 min read
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Linus Tech tips coverage of computex 2013 is powered by Western Digital our
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trusted gaming gear partner is Corsair Vengeance and our trusted retail partner
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is nc.com all right guys we're kicking off
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our day one coverage of computex 2013 in our home base in the WD Booth don't
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forget we are giving away a ton of cool stuff courtesy of Western Digital after
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the show the more you watch our WD coverage of the show The more prizes
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we're going to be giving away everything from hard drives to full gaming system
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all that kind of cool stuff check out the link to the Forum under in the video
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description to get all of the details now behind me you're going to see the
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main attraction here in the WD Booth this is a 14t 250 lb racing car made out
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of what is essentially a high density foam that is
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molded into the shape of actual hard drive components with a steel frame it
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has a racing seat inside so you can actually sit in it and get your picture
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taken as part of the Booth's attraction and we are going to be getting a sneak
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peek of the reveal that's actually going to happen in a little while but you'll
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see it first online as Tech tips this is it this is the big reveal I have my
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lovely assistants from WD revealing this car go ahead guys which is actually made
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so they took CAD drawings of components of hard drive some of the highest
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performance hard drives that you could possibly feasibly imagine with
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technology today and they blew it up huge scale so some of the things are
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blown up more or less than others this right here is a hard drive platter is
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actually not that much bigger than what you'd find in a 3 and 1 half in Drive
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however this guy here is significantly larger than what you'd see in real life
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this is a dual stage actuator assembly here that is what actually reads and
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writes the data off of The Platters and the cool thing about this is while it
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looks pretty big here and you could probably fit that platter I showed you
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before in between the actual distance between these and the platters in real
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life is 100 angstrom so to put that in perspective Ive a human hair is a
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million angstroms a bacteria is 5,000 angstroms and a virus is about 100
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angstrom so these things are flying many many miles an hour over the top of the
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platter and there the tolerances are uh are not very big so we're going to make
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our way towards the back of the car these are the coils that actually drive
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the head assembly over the platters themselves they have to be extremely
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precise in order to read any data off of it and at all we've got more dual stage
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actuators more coils all of this is made of a high density foam with a steel
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skeleton so the whole thing actually only weighs 250 lbs making it very
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portable but it's solid enough that you can actually sit in the thing now the
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amount of the craftsmanship that went into this this is handbuilt so if you
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were to get really really close you'd be able to see every sandpaper mark on the
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thing because they spent countless hours building this thing to show show off
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their technology so down here we've actually got a PCB Trace that's been
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blown up to car size as well as a pivot
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bearing right here so these high technology bearings actually have to be
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smooth enough and precise enough for that well that those those tiny tiny
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data tolerances now we're going to sort of cheat and we're going to be the first
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ones to sit in the car here I'm just going to lift up the side door we're
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going to go ahead and see if I can maneuver this thing so while it is
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durable enough to sit in I also wouldn't recommend jumping right into it because
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it is made of uh of foam it doesn't have quite the same structural strength as a
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as an actual Western Digital hard drive here we
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go and of course uh I can't promise that
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any hard drive you buy will make you this cool but if there's even a chance I
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think I'll go for it guys stay tuned don't miss any of our computex coverage
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and as always don't forget to subscribe to lus Tech tips