WD today released the WD Black2 dual drive, a storage device that fuses a 2.5-inch 120 GB solid state drive (SSD) with a 1 TB hard disk drive (HDD).

Designed for notebooks, small form factor desktops, and single-slot and all-in-one (AIO) systems, the WD Black2 dual drive connects through a single cable and fits into a conventional 9.5 mm slot.

Utilizing the benefits of both 20nm NAND flash and magnetic disks, WD Black2 dual drives offload data usage from the SSD to the HDD, which increases endurance and life of the SSD. With WD Black2, you can save your data on the 1 TB 5,400 RPM hard drive, or split data between both.

WD Black2 is free of caching algorithms and benefits from SATA 6 Gb/second interface speed. It uses a customized JMicron JMF667H controller built for efficiency of data management per cell resulting, according to WD. In addition, the Shift_Technology allows you to migrate larger data files to the hard drive and provides your SSD with less system drag, which increases the overall endurance and mileage of the SSD.

The built-in SSD is 128 GB, however only 120 GB is available to end users, as 8 GB of space is left for provisioning to help protect and improve SSD reliability.

The drive is packaged in a standard 9.5 mm, 2.5-inch form factor with legacy SATA connector, making the WD Black2 dual drive compatible with popular PC operating systems ranging from Windows XP to Windows 8.1 (no Mac support).

In order to enable the HDD portion of the WD Black2 drive, you should run the WD Black2Installation program, which is available for download by plugging in a USB Web key provided into the drive's package.

Available now, WD Black2 dual drives are covered by a five-year limited warranty. MSRP for the 2.5-inch 120 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD WD Black2 dual drive, model (WD1001X06XDTL) is $299.00 USD - more than what you may have to spend for an 128GB SSD and an 1TB HDD

Specifications

- Interface: SATA 6 Gb/s
- Advanced Format (AF)
- Load/unload Cycles: 600,000 minimum
- Non-recoverable read errors per bits read:<1 in 10¹⁴

- Buffer To Host (Serial ATA): 6 Gb/s (Max)

- Capacity: 120 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD
- Form Factor: 2.5 Inch

- Target Performance (SSD)

Internal transfer rate (read, max): 350 MB/s
Internal transfer rate (write, max): 140 MB/s

- Dimensions
Height 9.5 mm
Depth 100.3 mm
Width 69.85 mm
Weight 0.125 kg

- Shock
Operating Shock (Read) 30G, 2 ms
Non-operating Shock 350G, 2 ms

- Acoustics
Idle Mode 20 dBA (average)
Seek Mode 0 21 dBA (average)

- Temperature
Operating -0° C to 60° C
Non-operating -40° C to 70° C

- Power Dissipation:
Read/Write 1.80 Watts
Idle 0.90 Watts
Standby 0.90 Watts
Sleep 0.90 Watts