WD reveals dual drive - a full 120GB SSD and 1TB hard drive in one

Western Digital has announced what it calls a dual drive - a full 120GB SSD and 1TB hard drive in one designed for the upgrade market.

The concept is a step on from the hybrid drives we've become used to seeing.

Those drives tend to only have a small slice of caching flash memory to boost boot and app startup times – the storage space is still predominantly the domain of the conventional hard drive.

However, WD is at pains to point out that it still sees a big market for hybrid drives despite the new launch.

Because it's designed to appeal both to horders as well as those of us who are used to speedy mobile devices, it could be said the WD Black 2 dual drive offers something of the best of both worlds with a full 6GB/s flash drive to store and speed along your OS, apps and programs plus a cavernous hard drive to contain all your photos, videos and files. And all in the size of a single 2.5-inch drive.

Easy transfer

Mind you, the hardware isn't cheap at £250 (around USD $405, AUD $443), but WD believes there will be a decent tranche of existing mobile device owners wanting their snazzy ultraportables and tablet devices to have a bit more storage space.

However, while the drive is compatible with everything from Windows XP to Windows 8, there is no Mac support currently. That's a shame, since we can't think of anything better to pair this with than a MacBook Air. Still, watch this space as we bet WD is working on it.

The drive connects through a single cable and fits into a conventional 9.5 mm slot. Note that the drives are totally independent and show as two separate drive letters; they can't be spanned into one drive.

Handily, WD is making it reasonably simple for upgraders to transition to the new drive with minimum disruption; it's providing a cable and setup software so you can clone the contents of your existing drive onto the new one before you swap the hardware over.

We'll be publishing a WD Black 2 dual drive review very soon on TechRadar.

• Has OS X Mavericks really been sending data on Western Digital drives up in smoke?