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