Singapore’s A*STAR Designed 5mm Hybrid 2.5-Inch 500GB HDD

The A-Drive, one of the world’s thinnest 5mm hybrid
HDD in a 2.5-inch form factor, was officially launched by Mr. S. Iswaran, Minister
in the Prime Minister’s Office and Second Minister for Home Affairs and Trade &
Industry, to commemorate the Data Storage Institute‘s
(DSI) twenty years of R&D in the area of storage capabilities. 

The A-Drive represents the next generation of storage
innovation providing capacities of up to 1TB HDD with 32GB SSD. This potentially
allows to store over 250,000 songs in its 5mm body. It also addresses limitations
of the popular, yet expensive, flash-based SSD, as well as the conventional HDD
for the consumer and business industry.

A-Drive is set to change the consumer and enterprise
landscape, targeted specifically for tablets, ultrabooks, and future data centres.
With its slim form factor, it could fit into tablet devices, expanding its storage space while extending
battery life by up to 30%.

The A-Drive will be a cheaper alternative to the SSDs
currently used in ultrabooks, offering the same instant-on capability but with larger
storage capacity. In addition,it can be extended for enterprise storage applications,
reducing power consumption by up to 50%, resulting in greener and more efficient
data centres with better optimisation of the already limited rack space.

"Today, our year-long vision of creating a 5mm
thin hybrid hard drive in 2.5" form factor with increased storage capacity
and reduced power consumption at a lower cost for manufacturers has become a reality,"
said Dr. Pantelis Alexopoulos, executive director of DSI. "We have managed
to fit an amazing amount of innovation and advanced technology into a thinner, cheaper,
and faster design, and we think the consumer and enterprise impact will be significant."

One of the main challenges in reducing the thickness
of current 7mm hard disk drives by almost 30% without compromising on its performance
and stability is its spindle motor design. To achieve a reduction in size, DSI researchers
developed a proprietary axial field motor which runs smoother, quieter, more efficiently,
lowering power consumption by up to 70% yet at a fraction of the cost of SSDs. The
motor’s design has been patented, along with 30 other designs for the A-Drive. In addition, DSI
has collaborated with multinational corporations and local companies, such as Seiko
Instruments, Miyoshi, and Unisteel, to develop key components for drive.

"Our capabilities today
have been the result of two decades of collaboration with industry partners around
the world. This has enabled DSI to develop groundbreaking solutions like the A-Drive.
We look forward to future partnerships as we continue our drive towards new innovations
that will shape the data storage landscape," said Alexopoulos.