Western Digital Releases 24TB Ultrastar & Gold Onerous Drives, 28TB SMR Drives Ramping

Western Digital is asserting immediately that it has begun quantity shipments of its 24 TB exhausting drives based mostly on typical magnetic recording (CMR) to its full buyer base. As well as, the corporate began to ramp up manufacturing of its 28 TB HDDs that includes shingled magnetic recording (SMR) that will probably be utilized by choose prospects.

The brand new lineup of three.5-inch 7200 RPM exhausting drives consists of Western Digital’s Ultrastar DC HC580 24 TB and WD Gold 24 TB HDDs, that are based mostly on the corporate’s energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording (ePMR) know-how. Each of those drives are additional enhanced with OptiNAND to enhance efficiency by storing repeatable runout (RRO) metadata on NAND reminiscence (as an alternative of on disks) and enhance reliability.

The corporate can be making ready their Ultrastar DC HC680 SMR 28 TB exhausting drive, which depends on shingled ePMR and OptiNAND.

Relating to efficiency, the brand new exhausting drives are a tad quicker than predecessors on account of increased areal density. In the meantime, per-TB energy effectivity of Western Digital’s 24 TB and 28 TB HDDs is round 10% – 12% increased than that of twenty-two TB and 26 TB drives, respectively, on account of increased capability and kind of the identical energy consumption. For CSPs and hyperscalers, the primary worth benefit of the brand new 24 TB drives is their increased capability, which permits as much as 612 TB of uncooked storage per rack utilizing 102-bay 4U chassis.

All three fashions function 10 platters and largely re-use the corporate’s present enterprise-grade platform for multi-drive environments, which was launched over a 12 months in the past. The platform historically incorporates a prime and backside hooked up motor in addition to RV sensors to make sure constant efficiency in vibrating multi-HDD chassis. The newest Ultrastar HDDs are typically being aimed toward cloud service suppliers, hyperscalers, and huge enterprises, whereas WD Gold are going primarily to VARs, enterprises, enterprise-grade NAS, and small companies that have to retailer a great deal of information.

Western Digital is transport WD Gold 24 TB exhausting drives by means of their distribution channel, so anticipate them to hit the market shortly. The Ultrastar DC HC680 and HC580 HDDs are actually within the qualification section with choose CSPs, hyperscalers, and OEMs. They’re additionally obtainable for enterprises that deploy these gadgets internally. It appears like WD is simply transport the SATA variations of those drives initially, as the corporate is separating noting that that the SAS variations of the Ultrastar DC HC680 and HC580 HDD will probably be obtainable within the first quarter of 2024.

“With these new choices, Western Digital is as soon as once more proving that arduous drives aren’t simply holding tempo, they’re forging a path ahead, making certain that data-intensive functions of immediately and tomorrow have a powerful basis to construct on whereas the business prepares for HAMR,” mentioned Ed Burns, analysis director of HDD and storage applied sciences at IDC. “We’re seeing robust momentum for Western Digital’s SMR HDDs and consider that SMR adoption will proceed to develop as their new 28TB SMR HDD provides the subsequent compelling TCO worth proposition that cloud prospects can not ignore.”