WD®, a Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) company,  today announced at COMPUTEX TAIPEI 2013 (booth L0810) it is shipping the world’s thinnest 1 TB hard drive with its new  2.5-inch WD Blue™ 7 mm hard drive. Offering  OEMs, channel integrators and consumers a unique storage solution for thin and  light systems, slimmer notebooks, as well as compatibility with the industry-standard  9.5 mm drive slots of mainstream notebooks, the WD Blue hard drive family, in capacities  from 320 GB to 1 TB in the 7 mm height, now provides a singular option of thin  design and high capacity storage.
 
     "Users with large portfolios of  content no longer need an Ultrabook or  upgrading to a thin and light notebook," said Matt Rutledge, Vice  President and General Manager for client storage products at WD. "This  most compact 1TB hard drive to-date offers manufacturers of systems an upsell  path for their customers who will now be able to choose systems offering both sleek  design and high capacity.
 
     “Intel is introducing its  fourth-generation Intel Core processor family (codenamed Haswell) to deliver  faster and more efficient performance to both desktop and notebook platforms,  with significant gains benefitting portable systems” said Roger Bradford,  Capabilities Marketing Manager at Intel. “The release of the WD Blue 7 mm hard  drives offers a new level of storage capacity that further enriches the computing experience for users of Ultrabooks, All-in-Ones and other thin and  light PCs.”

     “With the release of WD’s 1 TB capacity in  a 7 mm drive height, Acer customers now have the best of both options and no  longer have to choose between the lightness of thin, sleekly designed systems  or those with high capacity storage,” said Tiffany Huang, BG President, PC  Global Operations at Acer Incorporated.

     “As ASUS develops new super-slim  solutions, reliable storage options such as the WD Blue 7 mm 1 TB hard drive  provide us with an ideal capacity to offer our customers,” said S.Y. Shian, Corporate  Vice President and General Manager of NB Business Unit at Asus. “WD has  eliminated the capacity limits heretofore endured by thin and light personal  computers while keeping the reliability and data-protection of a traditional  hard drive.”

     Features of the WD Blue 7 mm hard drives  include: 

• Shock  Tolerance – WD’s ShockGuard™ technology protects the drive mechanics and platter surfaces  from shocks. 
• Cool  and quiet - WD’s exclusive WhisperDrive™ technology enables  quiet performance. 
• StableTrac™ – The motor shaft is secured at both ends to compensate for  system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking during  read and write operations which enables consistently higher performance. 
• Dual Stage Actuators – Leveraged from enterprise-class drives, dual stage actuators utilize  two actuators to improve positional accuracy over the data track(s). The  primary actuator provides coarse displacement using conventional  electromagnetic actuator principles. The secondary actuator uses piezoelectric  motion to fine tune the head positioning to a higher degree of accuracy. 
• Reliable  – WD’s SecurePark™ parks the recording heads off the disk surface during  spin up, spin down, and when the drive is off. This ensures the recording head  never touches the disk surface resulting in improved long term reliability due  to less head wear, and improved non-operational shock tolerance.  
• Compatibility  Tested - WD performs tests on hundreds of systems and a multitude of platforms in  its FIT Lab™ and Mobile Compatibility Lab to give customers confidence that drives  will work in specific systems.

1. and Availability
     Shipping now through select  distributors and resellers, the new 1 TB WD Blue 7 mm 2.5-inch mobile hard  drive is covered by a two-year limited warranty. MSRP for the 1 TB, model#: (WD10SPCXX) is $139.00 USD. Additional  information about WD Blue mobile hard drives and limited warranty terms  may be found on the company website at http://www.wd.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=800.