The Singapore Digital Storage Institute has developed one of the thinnest drives.

Photo: DSI

A-Drive is a hybrid hard drive just 5 mm thick, developed by Singaporean A * STAR Data Storage Institute (DSI) - one of the thinnest in the world in the 2.5 '' form factor. In addition, it is one of the thinnest in general - the Western Digital hybrid drive also holds the first place with a thickness of 5 mm. The new hard drive was presented to the public on November 1, the day of the twentieth anniversary of the existence of the Institute.

A-Drive, which is scheduled to be introduced to the market throughout the year at a price of around 60 USD, can hold up to 1 TB on the HDD and up to 32 GB on the SSD.
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Compared with SSD, hybrid hard drives have more capacity for less money, as well as lower power consumption. In tablets with SSD, such a drive could greatly increase the amount of available memory and at the same time increase battery life by 30%. Another such drive can be used in ultrabooks, where the thickness is one of the key factors.

DSI Executive Director Dr. Pantelis Alexopoulos told Yahoo! That A-Drive also has better security features than SSDs. In particular, if an SSD physically fell into the hands of intruders, its data encryption may be uncovered. According to him, this is not the case with A-Drive.

Hybrid drives can be sold either as separate devices or as part of mobile devices assembled by OEMs. The corporate segment may also show an interest in technology that can halve the cost of electricity.

Now DSI is negotiating with potential partners for the implementation of drives in Singapore. Dr. Alexopoulos suggests that from the moment of the conclusion of partnership agreements to production will be 6-8 months.

The researchers registered a patent for a device developed for this drive of an electric motor with axial excitation (I hope I correctly translated the axial field motor - approx. Lane ) and 30 other patents.