Researchers working on slim HDDs to fit tablets

Scientist at the Data Storage Institute in Singapore announced that they are working on a HDD form factor that will drop the thickness of the HDD.

Main reason for this being is that companies don’t see any real profit in tablets, with more than a couple of them announcing their drop out of the market in 2012, HDDs could potentially offer more opportunities for tablets as well as ultrabooks.

“DSI is very excited about the direction that we are taking. We strongly believe there is an opening in the market for thin drives,” said Pantelis Alexopoulos, executive director at DSI.

With the thinnest HDD measuring only 7mm, which apparently is too big for tablet standard, the researchers are currently working on a 5mm thin HDD.

Yet that is not all, apparently they are also working on hybrid models, which could potentially bring a technology comparable to the SSD caching into the thin drive.

Unfortunately, another problem shows up with this type of technology; the HDD is slower and more power hungry, which is something that will have to be dealt with one way or another if the tablet market is to switch from SSD to HDD.

Data Storage Institute did say that they will be demonstrating a 5mm drive sometime in the future, although no specific date was given.

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