New ultra-thin hard drive or SSD

According to IHS's storage market briefing, new 5.0 and 7.0-mm thin HDDs from manufacturers have the potential to regain some market share from solid-state drives (SSDs), especially if these new hard drives can enter the future ultra-thin PCs. And PC tablet words.

The 5.0 and 7.0-mm hard drives are lighter and thinner, and will form a new class of ultra-thin hard drives that are expected to eventually replace the currently dominant 9.5-mm hard drives. Shipments of 5.0 and 7.0-mm hard drives are expected to reach 133 million in 2017, compared with 5 million last year. At the same time, shipments of 9.5mm hard disks will decrease from 245 million in 2012 to 79 million by 2017, as shown in Figure 2.

5.0 and 7.0-mm hard drives and hybrid hard drives will be more widely adopted this year. In a hybrid hard disk, NAND flash memory or so-called cache SSD is packaged with the hard disk. Because these new products are smaller in size and can improve overall storage performance, they will be used more. These characteristics are very important in an era when the price is moderate and the size is smaller and the speed is better.

Thin hard drives and hybrid hard drives are likely to enter ultra-thin PCs and tablet PCs. Currently, these two markets mainly use solid state drives. Because SSD performance is better, using it can make tablet PCs and ultra-thin PCs even thinner and lighter, so the market share of HDDs is constantly being eroded.

For example, SSD shipments will increase by nearly 90% this year to 64.6 million, while HDD shipments will drop by 5% to 545.8 million. However, IHS believes that the thinner new HDD may prevent the hard disk market from declining, especially if its cost can be reduced to 10-15% of tablet PCs or 10-20% of ultra-thin PCs.

These standards are very important, because only the cost down to this level, it is possible to convince the Tablet PC and ultra-thin PC brands to consider using 5.0 and 7.0-mm hard drive instead of SSD. Currently, SSDs and other storage types are relatively expensive, reducing the overall profits of computer and tablet manufacturers. Therefore, the use of lower-cost storage solutions can increase the profitability of manufacturers, and will be a powerful factor in prompting manufacturers to change their practices.

HDD manufacturers will both introduce new types of hard drives, Western Digital and Seagate, and Japan’s Toshiba will launch their own thin hard drives.

Western Digital took the lead in April, announcing that it has begun shipping 5.0mm WD Blue slim HDDs and Black SSHDs to some distributors as well as OEM customers -- a solid state hybrid hard drive that combines hard drives with cached SSDs. Western Digital claims that this product has a capacity of 500GB, which can reduce the weight by up to 30% compared with a 9.5mm hard disk. The circuit board adopts a mobile phone miniaturization technology, which can maximize the mechanical swing space in the hard disk to ensure the shockproof performance.

Western Digital later announced in June that it will ship the world’s thinnest 1TB hard drive, WD Blue, which is only 7.0mm thick. Both Acer and Asustek may use it in their upcoming ultra-thin PCs.

Western Digital’s rival Seagate also announced in June that it will begin shipments of ASUS, Dell and Lenovo’s 5.0mm HDDs to ultra-thin PCs that these vendors plan to launch in the second half of 2013. Seagate said that its 500GB hard drive has a 25% smaller space than its 7.0mm HDD.

In the face of Western Digital and Seagate’s actions, Toshiba stated that it will launch a 7.00 solid-state hybrid hard drive (SSHD) with 320 and 500GB capacity, which may be available before the end of June. Previously, Toshiba had only 9.5-mm SSHD with a maximum capacity of 750GB.