Intel Pushes For 5mm Hard Drives In Ultrabooks At IDF

At the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in Beijing, Intel began pushing for slimmer Hard Drives in Ultrabooks. The new standard they are calling for has hard disk drives (HDD’s) standing only 5mm tall, or 28% smaller compared to current 7mm HDD’s. On top of the size change, Intel is also calling for an “In Form-Factor SATA Host Interface” which as you can see from the image is far smaller then the current SATA interface and has been moved to the far corner instead of the central location seen previously. While HDD manufacturers can get 5mm drives ready, the new SATA interface will take some time and isn’t expected to be ready until the 4th Quarter of this year and, that’s of course barring any potential setbacks. That said, Intel does expect 1TB 5mm drives inside 15mm Ultrabooks by 2015.