WD 6Gb SATA Dual Drive With 120GB SSD and 1TB HDD

WD announced a new category of product in its WD Black lineup, an all-in-one SSD-HDD solution, the Black² Dual drive.

Until then the company was focused on HDD for retail and wasn’t onboard with the SSD trend. This solution boasts a 1TB HDD drive with a 120GB SSD drive into the same enclosure. It addresses a niche market for laptop and small workstation equipped with only one bay but in need for a mix of performance and large storage capacity.

Developed to take advantage of SSD performance without impacting the lifespan of flash memory, the solution is marketed as a premium product for bulk distribution. For the company it’s a shot in a new category of product and a response to the rapid development of competing SSHD solutions, like the Seagate and Toshiba units.

Although this technology is the first of it’s kind in the WD lineup, the company decided to position it in the Black family instead of creating a new family of products just to test the response of the market. If it performs well, updated versions with larger capacity may be considered but for now it’s too early for the business to spin it in a standalone product line.

On the software side the disk ships with an USB key to install and configure the partitions, and it will then offer to download Acronis software to clone the replaced installed disk. The configuration wizard is designed to put only the OS files and apps on the SSD and all other files on the HDD part. Unfortunately there is no program to move the most-used files automatically on the SSD. One the configuration is done, it’s up to the customer to choose what goes where.

WD finally decided to take some risks and innovate with a new product instead of minor updates to their product line or a rebranding of their NAS family. The system sells for $339 or €300 and is only compatible with Windows OSs for now.

              All hybrid HDDs launched (all in 2.5-inch form factor but one)

There is a trend since the first SSHDs to add more and more flash capacity. From 128MB in the early days, it was increased to 4, 8 and 16GB. WD jumps directly to 128GB. But here, it’s not caching, only SDD for booting added to HDD. As the capacity SSD is growing faster that the magnetic storage, you can imagine that in the long term, users will prefer SSD only.