WD Black2

The WD Black2 is a dual hybrid drive solution from Western Digital with a 120GB SSD coupled with a 1TB traditional rotating media on a single SATA device. Factory configuration of the drive allows a SATA host to only recognize the 120GB capacity per the SSD.

The 1TB media is "unlocked" via a Windows installer tool available from Western Digital's product website. Although the WD Black2 seems to be a device that only works with Microsoft Windows, the installer simply "unlocks" the upper 1TB and partitions the drive in 2 parts to distinguish between storage on the SSD and storage on the HDD. Once the HDD storage is unlocked, it may be used on Linux distribution and this article will explain how to set this up.