Setting a New Standard
Western Digital has introduced the Ultrastar DC HC690, a 32 TB hard drive that sets a new benchmark in storage capacity for shingled magnetic recording (SMR) drives. This new unit surpasses the previous Ultrastar DC HC680, which had a 28 TB capacity, by incorporating UltraSMR technology and an innovative design featuring no fewer than 11 disks. This setup allows for approximately 14% more data storage compared to its predecessor while maintaining the same physical size. This progress highlights Western Digital’s commitment to leading the industry and meeting the growing demands for large-scale data storage.
A Small Trade-off in Performance
Despite its impressive capacity, the Ultrastar DC HC690 experiences a slight dip in performance compared to the previous model. Its read and write speed is 257 MB/s, down from 265 MB/s in the HC680, marking a decrease of about 3%. For applications where capacity is more critical than speed, such as long-term data archiving or training artificial intelligence models, this performance reduction is negligible.
Competition Continues to Heat Up
Western Digital is not alone in aiming for ever-greater storage capacities. Toshiba has already achieved a 32 TB capacity using Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) technology, and Seagate plans to launch a 120 TB hard drive by 2030 using a similar approach. These competitors are striving to push past the current limitations of SMR hard drives by optimizing performance while increasing storage density.
A Disk for the Future of Data Centers
The 32 TB hard drive from Western Digital, with its massive capacity and adequate performance, could prove to be an attractive option for data centers. It is particularly well-suited for artificial intelligence systems, where storing vast amounts of data is crucial. Although SSDs are faster, HDDs like the Ultrastar DC HC690 remain a cost-effective solution for long-term storage of large data volumes.
While the price and availability details of these models are not yet known, one can assume they won’t come cheap!