SSD and HDD combined
Western Digital has unveiled its newest hybrid drive that actually combines a 120GB SSD with a standard 1TB HDD, all packed in a standard 2.5-inch 9.5mm form factor and with standard SATA connector, the WD Black².
The new hybrid drive, known under WD1001X06XDTL model number, is a new generation hybrid driver that does not actually use flash memory for caching but looking to combine the best from both worlds in a single drive. Western Digital aims the new WD Black² at notebooks, All-in-One (AIO) systems and various other compact computers, as long as they can fit 9.5mm thick 2.5-inch drive. This unfortunately excludes most of the recently unveiled Ultrabooks and thin and light notebooks but if all goes well we are sure that WD will come up with a thinner one as well.
Unlike traditional and previously introduced SSHDs, there are quite a few limitations with the new WD Black². On traditional SSHDs, the flash memory actually acts as a read buffer which user has no direct access to, but on WD Black² it is a whole different story. Of course, the HDD part is not accessible before OS is installed on the SSD part of the drive, while HDD part is enabled via WD software, once the OS is installed. Currently, it only supports Windows as there is currently no software available for Linux OS and Mac OS. WD uses ASMedia controller and needs storage driver from Nvidia.
Other current limitations include lack of RAID support with other drives and it is obviously not possible to extend the partition over both drives.
Performance wise, the SSD part of the WD Black² offers up to 350MB/s read and 140MB/s write sequential performance while random read and write is set at 57k and 34k IOPS.
Such combination also comes with a rather high price tag, as the WD Black² is currently listed at €299 in Europe. Considering that Samsung's 840 Evo 500GB SSD can currently be found for as low as €280, the WD Black² actually sounds a but expensive. Of course, you still get 1TB of HDD space and 120GB of SSD one.
According to WD, the bundle includes USB 3.0-SATA adapter, Acronis True Image WD Edition and it also comes with a five-year limited warranty.
Source: Computerbase.de.
The new hybrid drive, known under WD1001X06XDTL model number, is a new generation hybrid driver that does not actually use flash memory for caching but looking to combine the best from both worlds in a single drive. Western Digital aims the new WD Black² at notebooks, All-in-One (AIO) systems and various other compact computers, as long as they can fit 9.5mm thick 2.5-inch drive. This unfortunately excludes most of the recently unveiled Ultrabooks and thin and light notebooks but if all goes well we are sure that WD will come up with a thinner one as well.
Unlike traditional and previously introduced SSHDs, there are quite a few limitations with the new WD Black². On traditional SSHDs, the flash memory actually acts as a read buffer which user has no direct access to, but on WD Black² it is a whole different story. Of course, the HDD part is not accessible before OS is installed on the SSD part of the drive, while HDD part is enabled via WD software, once the OS is installed. Currently, it only supports Windows as there is currently no software available for Linux OS and Mac OS. WD uses ASMedia controller and needs storage driver from Nvidia.
Other current limitations include lack of RAID support with other drives and it is obviously not possible to extend the partition over both drives.
Performance wise, the SSD part of the WD Black² offers up to 350MB/s read and 140MB/s write sequential performance while random read and write is set at 57k and 34k IOPS.
Such combination also comes with a rather high price tag, as the WD Black² is currently listed at €299 in Europe. Considering that Samsung's 840 Evo 500GB SSD can currently be found for as low as €280, the WD Black² actually sounds a but expensive. Of course, you still get 1TB of HDD space and 120GB of SSD one.
According to WD, the bundle includes USB 3.0-SATA adapter, Acronis True Image WD Edition and it also comes with a five-year limited warranty.
Source: Computerbase.de.
News by Luca Rocchi and Marc Büchel - German Translation by Paul Görnhardt - Italian Translation by Francesco Daghini
Previous article - Next article
comments powered by Disqus
comments powered by Disqus