The Western Digital WD10SPCX

The 1 TB WD Blue (WD10SPCX) hard disk drive looks like any other 2.5" mobile hard drive, with a label on the top plate and an uncovered PCB on the underside. But when you pick it up, you will immediately notice that it's thinner (7 mm, instead of 9.5 mm) and lighter (90 g, instead of 100 g).

Unlike previous Western Digital drives, the label on the WD10SPCX is on the underside, with a plain white Slim sticker on the top. The label at the bottom has a lot of important information, like the hard drive model, storage capacity and serial number. There are also interesting details like its date and place of manufacture. This particular drive was manufactured in Malaysia on 21st of May, 2013.

Do note that this is an Advanced Format drive. If you're using an older operating system like Windows XP or Windows 98, you will need to use the WD Align software to ensure the drive performs properly.

Advanced Format Technology

Western Digital used their Advanced Format Technology (AFT) to help achieve the areal density necessary to create the 500 GB platters used in this hard disk drive. However, AFT has some effect on performance.

By allowing for a higher areal density, AFT will boost a drive's sequential transfer rate, while the tighter spatiality of the data blocks improves sequential seek times. The larger ECC block will not only improve data integrity, it will also allow for faster error checking and correction for the same amount of data.

When used with operating systems that have native support for Advanced Format Technology, the larger sector size will reduce the command overhead as fewer commands are needed to transfer the same amount of data. However, we will only see this benefit in future AFT drives that do not use the 512-byte emulation mode.

The WD10SPCX uses the 512-byte emulation mode for compatibility reasons. This actually incurs a significant performance penalty, which we have dubbed as the "Advanced Format effect". To counter this effect, Western Digital normally doubles the size of their Advanced Format drive's SDRAM buffer. Some drives, like the 500 GB WD Blue Slim (WD5000LPVT), continue to sport puny 8 MB SDRAM buffers. However, we are glad to report that the WD10SPCX features a larger 16 MB SDRAM buffer, which should help to make up for the performance penalty incurred by the 512-byte emulation mode.

Finally, data accesses that are less than 4,096 bytes in size will incur some performance penalty. This is because the Advanced Format drive will read the entire 4 KB sector even if you only needed a single byte. The good news is that in this day and age of files that run into tens, if not hundreds of megabytes, such small accesses are uncommon.

For more details on Advanced Format Technology and the "Advanced Format effect", take a look at The Western Digital Advanced Format Performance Comparison Guide.

Connectors & Breather Hole

This is a Serial ATA hard drive, with native support for SATA 6 Gb/s. However, it is backward-compatible so you will have no problem using it with older SATA 1.5 Gb/s controllers. The faster SATA 6 Gb/s interface is really overkill since the WD10SPCX hard disk drive only boasts a maximum sustained internal (platter-to-buffer) transfer rate of 140 MB/s.

Like all Serial ATA drives, it comes the standard SATA data (left) and power (right) connectors and is hot-pluggable. That means you can connect and disconnect this hard disk drive to your PC while it's still running. Unlike its thicker brethren, the WD10SPCX has no jumper block. That's no big deal since there's no need to mess around with the jumper block.

The WD10SPCX has an unmarked breather hole on the under plate, right above the headstack. Do not cover this hole. Breather holes allow condensation inside the hard drive to escape. They also equalize the hard drive's internal pressure with the ambient air pressure. The hard disk drive needs them to function properly, so please make sure you do not occlude this hole, or any other hole you may see.

Peeking Under The PCB

Although Western Digital has a penchant for keeping all surface-mounted components on the reverse side of the PCB - to prevent static damage and to allow for better cooling, this isn't possible with their Slim drives. Due to the slimmer profile, they have to use a much smaller PCB with surface-mounted components on both sides.

The WD10SPCX drive uses the Marvell 88i9446-BRL2 drive controller, which is a newer version of the Marvell 88i9346 controller used in the 4 TB RE (WD4000FYYZ) and 4 TB Black (WD4003FZEX) drives. This is a dual-core processor, which would boost its ability to handle multiple transactions simultaneously. It also uses the WD REDFIN motor drive controller, which features the proprietary Smooth Drive pseudo-sinusoidal digital drive technology. Smooth Drive allows the hard disk drive to minimize torque ripple to reach a higher track density as well as reduce noise levels.

Finally, the WD10SPCX features a shock sensor, located on the underside the of the PCB. This shock sensor helps to prevent damage to the drive by automatically parking the read/write heads whenever a significant shock event or a fall is detected. This reduces the risk of a head crash while the drive is active.

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