A Hard Drive So New, It Still Feels Warm

I hate to stretch the truth like that before the first story word, but I failed to conjure up a better title in less time than it takes to write the actual post. As you may recall, WD announced its “UltraSlim” mobile drives a couple of weeks ago, a world’s first at 5mm thick, and given that’s roughly 3 US pennies stacked on top of each other, it almost feels wrong to use the word “thick” at all.

Last Thursday, UPS had the honor of delivering the first package to my new apartment. It weighed so little, I had begun to wonder if there was anything more than packing paper in there. I cracked it open, and there it was, the world’s thinnest hard drive.

Normally, I would have set up a white background for these shots, but given I’ve only unpacked about 20% of my boxes, I hope you’ll excuse the bizarre scene comprised of Nintendo 64 box, WD water bottle and Kingston HyperX SSD.

Perhaps more impressive than the drive itself (I kid, WD) is the fact that it was manufactured a mere 9 days before I received it – 3 days before the official announcement. It’s not uncommon to receive a product sample for review so soon after it’s manufactured (it’s fairly common with some GPUs), but I don’t believe it’s common with hard drives. WD wasted no time at all in getting these out the door.

As you can see in the topmost image, the drive uses a special connector; one I can’t even take advantage of at the moment. I’m looking into it though, and would be open to suggestions on how I’d go about hooking this up to a regular PC for testing – or if it’s even possible. As thin as it is, I don’t even believe it’d fit into the Ultrabooks that have passed through my hands, so testing may have to wait until we can procure a current Ultrabook or similar device that can use it.

Despite being teased by a drive I can’t take advantage of, I’m in relative awe at the size of this thing.

Seriously. I could fit it into my wallet if I really wanted to.