In advance of Computex 2013, Western Digital announced that it is shipping the world’s thinnest terabyte hard drive. Its 2.5-inch WD Blue 1TB hard drive is a mere 7mm thick.

Offering OEMs, channel integrators, and consumers a storage solution for thin and light systems, slimmer notebooks, as well as compatibility with the industry-standard 9.5 mm drive slots of mainstream notebooks, the WD Blue hard drive family comes in capacities from 320GB to 1TB in the 7mm height.

“Users with large portfolios of content no longer need to sacrifice capacity when buying and Ultrabook or upgrading to a thin and light notebook,” said Matt Rutledge, vice president and general manager for client storage products at WD. “This most compact 1TB hard drive to-date offers manufacturers of systems an upsell path for their customers who will now be able to choose systems offering both sleek design and high capacity.

Among the features of the WD Blue 7mm hard drives are shock tolerance, and noise and vibration reduction. WD’s ShockGuard technology protects the drive mechanics and platter surfaces from shocks. The company’s exclusive WhisperDrive technology enables quiet performance. With StableTrac, the motor shaft is secured at both ends to compensate for system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking during read and write operations.

The WD Blue’s dual-stage actuators, leveraged from enterprise-class drives, utilize two actuators to improve positional accuracy over the data track(s). The primary actuator provides coarse displacement using conventional electromagnetic actuator principles. The secondary actuator uses piezoelectric motion to fine-tune the head positioning.

Western Digital’s SecurePark parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down, and when the drive is off. This ensures the recording head never touches the disk surface, which according to the company, results in improved long-term reliability due to less head wear, and improved non-operational shock tolerance.

WD performs compatibility tests on hundreds of systems and a multitude of platforms in its FIT Lab and Mobile Compatibility Lab to give customers confidence that drives will work in specific systems.

The 1TB WD Blue 7mm 2.5-inch mobile hard drive is now available for $139.