WD at Computex 2013 Booth Tour Day 2 - Ultra Slim, High Capacity, Rugged Drives & WD Giveaway
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,430 words · ~7 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 guys we're here at the WD booth
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at computex 2013 it's day two this is our home base and there's a bit of a
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team meeting going on here some photo opportunities I just want to remind you
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guys we've got a ton of giveaways that we're doing in collaboration with WD you
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can check out the WD homepage they've got a link to all their videos or or you
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can click the link in the video description to the Linus Tech tips Forum
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where there's full details we're giving away internal drives external drives
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full-blown gaming systems but we're not going to be talking about gaming systems
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in this particular video we're going to be focused on the slim thin and Light 2
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and2 in WD drives that are available in some pretty new and interesting
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configurations let's go have a look now these are the drives I alluded to before
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where we're pushing the envelope in terms of the storage available in these
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slim form factors now for a long time we've had very thin devices I mean iPads
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and iPods and IPS and whatever else there happens to be but the problem is
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that they all rely on flash which is fast and it's shock resistant but what
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it isn't is High Capacity now this is a traditional 9 and 1 half MIM Drive can I
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get my lovely assistant to hold up a slim notebook for me here that clearly
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with all the other things that need to be inside such as the keyboard and
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touchpad and PCB and all that stuff that clearly wasn't going to fit so that is
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where slim 7 mm drives came into play so
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we were able to get reasonable capacities into these form factors the
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problem with 7mm drives was they still weren't that high capacity and the fact
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that well they still weren't really thin enough for some of the devices people
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wanted so WD completely re-engineered the 2 and a half mm drive to make it
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more shock resistant I don't know if you guys saw that fall but uh it is still as
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shock resistant as one of the larger drives and they are able to achieve new
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capacities in 7 mm as well as a
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completely new form factor which is the 5mm drive so this right here is a 1 tbte
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device in a 7 mil form factor and this guy right here is a 500 gig Drive in a 5
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mm slim form factor so how do you do that the question might be well number
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one is instead of using a metal top they're actually sealing the top with a
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plastic coating number two is changing to a micro PCB you know how I mentioned
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that the drive won't fit in the notebook because of all the electronic components
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that are all over the bottom of it well WD went okay well the bottoms of our
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drives are covered in these things so I guess let's just cover less of the
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bottom of the drive in it and then we'll have more room for platters so the main
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difference between the ultra slim which is the 5 mil and the slim which is the 7
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mil is that this one has one platter inside for 500 gigs of storage and the
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other one has two platters inside for one terabyte of storage now robustness
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is so important for these form factors I mean check out this tablet right here go
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ahead and lift this up for me I'm going to do my trademark phone thickness
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comparison here so you are actually talking about a device that has a hard
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drive inside it that is not much thicker
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than a smartphone this is an HTC1 so it's not exactly a brick by any stretch
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of the imagination but what does that mean for the ruggedness and the
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robustness of the drive itself this new
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design actually increases the resistance
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to damage whether it is from touching the top of it which makes no sense to
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the Layman like me because I look at this thing and I go holy crap I can
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actually see the outline of the components inside it doesn't even have a
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metal cover but it actually improves the
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ruggedness of the drive compared to a metal cover which is just mindblowing so
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the this these tablets right here are actually showing a number of drop tests
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that were done by wd's engineering team where they basically go okay let's uh
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let's drop it let's play catch with it let's do all these stuff and what
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happens is the heads actually Park and
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you can even they they they actually want us to do a demo maybe one of the
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other days we'll see we'll see if we can get a tablet that we can drop but you
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can actually play back media files uninterrupted while the heads are parked
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on these hybrid drives so this right here we didn't talk about this yet these
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are the black drives so they are sshds or hybrid drives that implement this new
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technology so we can have up to a 500 GB
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ultra slim or a 1 tbte slim but not only
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do they have all the drive components on here they've actually put n flash as
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well anywhere from 8 gigs to 16 gigs to 24 gigs is available on these hybrid
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drives so right now you're going to see these in OEM devices only but it's
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extremely exciting to see some of the stuff that we have on demo here actually
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that one I can't lift up but hopefully you get the point now behind me here I have three
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glass showcases this one was impressive and sort of a you know yeah WD that's
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pretty uh 2012 there what you got going
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on so this is a 1 TB 9 1 12 mm drive
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this uses the the old design so they got the big metal cover single stage
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actuator you got a couple platters in there and then check that out that
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honking huge PCB I mean how did they get away with that kind of inefficiency
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before I'm just I'm just I'm just messing with these guys but the reality
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of it is these new drives for 2013 have been completely re-engineered so you see
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that plastic coating on the top underneath that is an extremely thin
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piece of what they're calling a micro metal it's so slim and thin that it
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still protects the drive and in fact gives it that ruggedness but doesn't
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take up extra space next we've got a dual stage actuator which improves the
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accuracy of the drive the ability of it to read from the platters we've still
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got two platters inside the drive and then moving down this is where a lot of
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the Innovation actually happened that PCB design you saw before with all the
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extra stuff they got rid of everything miniaturized everything and they were
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able to get the PCB completely out of the way of the spinning platters
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themselves reducing the thickness again now this guy right here uses the same
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technology this is the Ultras slim so that's a 7 mil you're looking at before
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right there and this is the 5mm so I'd like my lovely assistant to come in here
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and show me how slim a 5mm Drive is this
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is an HTC1 so you can pretty much store 500 gigs of storage in this or you can
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store like you know your contacts and
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your cell phone and I mean these are impressive too you got to give them some credit right so there you go guys this
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is our day two coverage of the WD Booth focusing on their ultra slim and slim
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drives available on 500 gig and one terabyte capacities don't miss any of
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our computech show coverage and don't miss any of our WD videos for a chance
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to win awesome prizes after the show