In an surprising announcement throughout their quarterly earnings name this week, Western Digital revealed that it has begun sampling an upcoming 32TB onerous drive. The nearline HDD is aimed toward hyperscalers, and depends on a mix of Westen Digital’s EAMR know-how, in addition to shingled magnetic recording (SMR) know-how to hit their highest capability figures thus far.
Western Digital’s 32TB HDD makes use of the entire firm’s most superior applied sciences. Apart from energy-assisted magnetic recording (EAMR/ePMR 2 to be extra exact) know-how, WD can also be leveraging triple-stage actuators for higher positioning of heads and two-dimensional (TDMR) learn heads, OptiNAND for additional efficiency and reliability, distributed sector (DSEC) know-how and a proprietary error correcting code (ECC) know-how. And, most significantly, UltraSMR know-how to supply further capability.
“We’re delivery samples of our 32TB UltraSMR/ePMR nearline onerous drives to pick clients,” stated David Goeckeler, chief govt of Western Digital, on the earnings name. “These drives characteristic superior triple-stage actuators and OptiNAND know-how that are designed for seamless qualification, integration and deployment in hyperscale cloud and enterprise knowledge facilities whereas sustaining distinctive reliability.”
Seagate is at present delivery its 30TB Exos HDDs primarily based on heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) platform known as Modaic 3+ to pick exascalers, and the corporate has implied that it may construct a 32TB model of the drive utilizing SMR. Due to this fact, from capability standpoint, Western Digital’s announcement signifies that the corporate has caught up with its rival.
As with the comapny’s different UltraSMR drives, the 32TB nearline drive is aimed toward WD’s enterprise clients, whose infrastructure can deal with the extra administration necessities that SMR imposes. As SMR in enterprise drives isn’t clear, it is as much as the host to handle lots of the complexities that include a tough drive that is not suited to random writes. Although a minimum of in WD’s case, the upshot is that UltraSMR additionally presents a extra important density improve than different SMR implementations, utilizing a bigger variety of SMR bands to extend HDD capability by as much as 20%.
Working backwards, that 20% capability improve additionally signifies that WD’s new drive is ranging from 2.56TB CMR platters. And whereas 2.56TB makes for a really respectable areal density, this could imply that WD remains to be behind rival Seagate when it comes to areal density total, as Seagate has 3TB CMR platters in its newest HAMR-based Exos drives.
