WD released the world’s first 32 TB HDD. Competitors are behind, albeit temporarily
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Western Digital has announced the world’s first 32TB hard drive that uses ePMR and UltraSMR technologies. This is the WD Ultrastar DC HC690 model. The company’s engineers added an additional plate, so there are now 11 of them instead of the usual 10. WD’s achievement is precisely that it was the first to release its disk of this capacity on the market. Seagate, for example, had prototypes of 30+ TB HDDs based on 10 plates with HAMR technology, but they are not available for sale. Well, let’s see what kind of disk it is.
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The new word in data storage: WD and the technologies of the future
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New generation hard drives from Western Digital can store up to 32 TB of data, which is a record for such devices. The new model, released under the Ultrastar brand, is aimed at data centers and is equipped with improved technologies: UltraSMR for tiled magnetic recording and ePMR for perpendicular magnetic recording using additional energy.
As for the additional plate, modern hard drives usually have 10 of them. Sometimes their number is different, but manufacturers rarely do so. So, in the Toshiba MG10 model, the number of plates is not 10, but 9, and the volume of the oldest HDD in the line is less than 20 TB.
If you need to increase the storage capacity, there are two ways:
- increase the density of data recording on each plate,
- add additional plates.
In the Ultrastar DC HC690 model, Western Digital applied both of these approaches, increasing the number of platters to 11, while maintaining the standard 3.5-inch form factor, which allows the drive to be used in existing data center infrastructure. No hardware changes are required – everything works as is, out of the box.
Technical details
One of the key challenges in the development of this device is to reduce the distance between the plates and optimize the internal components, such as the head system and control electronics. As a result of these changes, WD managed not only to add an additional plate, but also to reduce the dimensions of the device (146×102×26.1 mm vs. 147×102×26.1 mm in the HC680 model for 28 TB). True, the disk is much heavier than its “relatives” – its weight has increased to 1.47 kg. For example, the predecessor, the DC HC680 model, weighed only 0.67 kg. Heavy is good, heavy is reliable!
The maximum transfer speed reaches 269 MB/s, which exceeds the performance of the previous model (261-265 MB/s). Idle power consumption ranges from 0.17 to 0.18 watts per terabyte of capacity, which is also an improvement over the HC680 (0.2 to 0.21 watts per terabyte).
As for the technologies used by the company in the design of the disk, it is, as mentioned above, ePMR and UltraSMR.
ePMR (Energy-Assisted Perpendicular Magnetic Recording) – Improved version of Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR). It is used to increase the recording density on the magnetic plates of hard drives. ePMR technology improves the consistency of recording head switching, which reduces “jitter” (recording noise) and allows for increased bits per inch (BPI).
During the recording process, an electric current is supplied to the main part of the head, which creates an additional magnetic field. It directs, so to speak, the process of magnetizing data bits to a preferred path. Accordingly, each pass of data recording has a more coherent waveform, which reduces jitter (noise). The distance between the recorded bits is reduced, which increases the BPI and data density.
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UltraSMR – An improved version of the Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) technology developed by Western Digital to increase the recording density on hard drives. SMR allows data to be recorded “overlapping”, similar to how shingles are laid on a roof. Unlike traditional magnetic recording, where data tracks are located in parallel, SMR tracks partially overlap each other. This increases recording density, but can slow down recording processes due to the need to overwrite adjacent tracks. UltraSMR is particularly effective in data centers where capacity and power consumption are a priority.
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Actually, these drives, as mentioned above, are intended specifically for the corporate sector, primarily data centers.
What competitors?
Seagate, WD’s main competitor, announced plans to release HDDs with a capacity of more than 30 TB with HAMR technology as early as 2023, but these devices never went on sale. The delay in bringing products to market has allowed Western Digital to overtake its rival in the race for leadership in the field of high-capacity drives.
Seagate develops hard drives with 10 plates, where the increase in recording density is achieved due to the technology of heating plates by laser (HAMR). WD also experimented with a similar technology – MAMR, but, considering everything, the company did not achieve significant success in this field.
SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) technology is used to increase the density of data recording on hard disk plates. Unlike traditional magnetic recording (CMR), where data is written in parallel, SMR has layers of data at its disposal, like shingles on a roof. This allows you to increase the number of tracks per inch and, as a result, to increase the overall data density.
HAMR (Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording) is a technology used by Seagate that uses the heating of the plates to 500 ° C to increase the recording density.
The future of data storage technologies
According to forecasts by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), data storage technologies based on traditional hard drives will develop at a significant pace during the coming decades. Already by 2028, HDDs with a volume of 60 TB are expected to appear on the market.
Regarding long-term forecasts, by 2037 hard drives with a volume of 100 TB and more are possible. This will be the next step in the evolution of data storage technologies. Progress is attributed to the constant improvement of recording methods, improvement of magnetic materials and reduction of the physical size of disk components. Developments in this area are critical, especially in the face of growing demand for storage capacity in enterprise segments such as data centers, cloud services, and big data.
However, even with the rapid development of SSD (solid state storage) technology, hard drives will retain their importance due to their higher cost per gigabyte of data and durability. HDD sales are forecast to grow from 166 million units in 2022 to 208 million units in 2028, and continue to grow to 359 million units by 2037. The demand for large volumes of data storage in various industries will only increase, which pushes manufacturers to develop new solutions for increasing the capacity of drives.
In general, the future promises us a lot of interesting things! But even now there are many interesting achievements, which we are trying to talk about.