At the Asus booth a Computex, WD demonstrates a HDD that connects to the computer using a PCI Express or SATA Express connection. Although the bandwidth of SATA-3 is sufficient for the speeds traditional HDDs are able to achieve, WD has it reasons for using both faster interfaces.
The company is using the interfaces on Hybrid HDDs, meaning traditional magnetic spinners combined with NAND flash memory. In this case WD shows their WD Black Dual Drive which combines a 4TB HDD with a 128GB SSD in a 3.5" enclosure. The HDD can be used for mass storage, while the SSD can be used for frequently accessed data, making the system respond much faster.
WD claims the WD Black Dual Drive is able to achieve speeds of up to 700 MB/s which is more than SATA-3 can handle. WD previously released a WD Black Dual Drive which still used SATA-3. This was 1TB drive combined with 120GB NAND.
WD has not disclosed any information on prices and availability.
Thanks to Liggy for the tip!
