Western Digital starts shipping 24 TB CMR HDDs, and ramps up production of 28 TB SMR drives

[Shawn Knight]

In brief: Western Digital has started shipping 24 TB conventional magnetic recording (CMR) hard drives to data center clients. The new drives include the Ultrastar DC HC580 24 TB Data Center HDD with improved OptiNAND technology. According to WD, the HC580 can enable up to 612 TB of raw storage per rack unit in a 4U 102-drive bay solution, and consumes 12 percent less watts per TB compared to the 22 TB version.

SAS HDD versions of the drive will be available in the first quarter of calendar year 2024, we are told.

Western Digital is also shipping its 24 TB WD Gold CMR 7200 RPM SATA HDD, which is designed to handle workloads up to 550 TB per year, and packs vibration protection tech. They come backed by a five year limited warranty and boast up to 2.5 million hours MTBF (mean time between failure).

Both new drive models utilize the standard 3.5-inch form factor, pack 512 MB of cache, and offer transfer speeds of up to 298 MB/s.

The storage specialist is also ramping up production of its 28 TB shingled magnetic recording (SMR) HDDs. WD said it designed the new Ultrastar DC HC680 SMR HDD for sequential write workloads where metrics like storage density, watt per TB, and dollar per TB are crucial. Target applications include video surveillance, cloud storage, online archiving, regulatory compliance, and other scenarios where data is likely to be infrequently accessed.

As Western Digital correctly highlights, the demand for high capacity, low power and reliable storage is poised to surge in the coming years.

Ed Burns, research director of hard disk drive and storage technologies for IDC, said that with the new offerings, Western Digital is proving that hard drives are not just keeping pace, they are forging a path forward and ensuring that the data-intensive applications of today and tomorrow have a solid foundation to build on.

Burns added that they believe SMR adoption will continue to grow as WD's new drives offer a value proposition that cloud customers cannot ignore.

Image credit: Benjamin Lehman

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https://www.techspot.com/news/100872-western-digital-starts-shipping-24-tb-cmr-hdds.html

 

[yRaz]

Jeez, and I remember my first 1GB drive. It's funny, I was so excited when we broke the terabyte mark but now I'm filled with reliability concerns with all these modern drives. It's incredible that they work at all, to be honest. I have 3, 8TB drives in I use for "cold storage" in my NAS but you better believe they're in RAID. With these larger drives I feel like I would need to double the parity to trust the data.

I would have to go from RAID5 to 6. Although, 54TB of storage in RAID 6 doesn't sound that bad. But I'm barely using 6TB right now on my NAS so I have no idea what I'd use it for. Maybe I'd download my favorite old TV shows and upscale them using AI or something. I'd love to watch Deep Space Nine in 4k!

 

[toooooot]

Saddest part to me is that no breakthroughs have been made to bring HDDs on a new level in reliability.
Surely, they got bigger, much much bigger. But with massive size nothing of equally great has come.
They only got bigger, but that improvement did not come protected by reliability. In my opinion, it seems right that the bigger they got, the better their quality and reliability got too.
I wonder what would happen of something similar to HDDs was invented but without all moving parts.

 

[amghwk]

I still remember the 10MB and 20MB drives I had in my XT back then. Those were pure luxury, and the amount of software and games that can be installed/copied into them were mind boggling at that time. Then came the era of 20GB and 40GB.

And now, we're seeing 20+TB... How time flies...

Soon, texture-happy, yet, empty-feeling games will soon take up 1.5TB from the now 150GB norms...

 

[toooooot]

I still remember the 10MB and 20MB drives I had in my XT back then. Those were pure luxury, and the amount of software and games that can be installed/copied into them were mind boggling at that time. Then came the era of 20GB and 40GB.

And now, we're seeing 20+TB... How time flies...

Soon, texture-happy, yet, empty-feeling games will soon take up 1.5TB from the now 150GB norms...

That's the thing. You would think eventually there would be enough space for everybody. 16k is knocking...