Western Digital Ultrastar & Gold 24 TB CMR HDDs Now Shipping, 28 TB SMR Drives Ramping

Western Digital has started volume shipments of its 24 TB UltraStar & Gold CMR HDDs while also ramping up 28 TB SMR drives.

The company has identified the immense demand from the cloud and data center segment, which is why they have decided to introduce two different HDDs into the market, employing the latest tech onboard. The new drives by Western Digital are the Ultrastar DC HC580 24 TB and Western Digital Gold 24 TB HDDs, which come with improved functionality and power efficiency.

Both of the disks feature energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording (ePMR) technology, which has helped the company to offer "the highest capacity HDDs on the market ". Through the integration of OptiNAND, which is a foundational architecture in the drives, Western Digital aims to dominate the industry in terms of powerful and efficient performance.

Speaking of efficiency, the HC580 has the ability to enable up to 612TB of raw storage per rack unit, and the drive is 12% higher in terms of per-TB power efficiency compared to its previous 22TB counterpart. The higher capacity coupled with amazing improvements within the energy department is what makes the HC580 ready for industry application, and potentially dominate in the longer run.

28TB Ultrastar DC HC680 SMR HDD

Western Digital is driving the next big shift in cloud data center with SMR HDDs. At 28TB, the new Ultrastar DC HC680 SMR HDD provides the utmost in storage density for hyperscale, cloud and enterprise customers. Designed for sequential write workloads where storage density, watt/TB and $/TB are critical parameters, it targets environments such as bulk storage, online backup and archive, video surveillance, cloud storage, storage for regulatory compliance, big data storage, and other applications where data may be infrequently accessed.

24TB Ultrastar DC HC580 CMR HDD

Continuing to deliver innovation at scale, the Ultrastar DC HC580 24TB CMR HDD with improved OptiNAND technology is the next leap in data density, allowing data center customers to maximize their storage within the same footprint, and in power-constrained environments. For better storage density, the HC580 can enable up to 612TB of raw storage per rack unit in a 4U 102-drive bay solution. These drives are also more power efficient, providing 12% less Watt/TB compared to the company’s previous 22TB version.

Ultrastar DC HC680 and HC580 SAS HDD versions will be available in CYQ1’24 (FYQ3’24).

WD Gold 24TB CMR HDDs

Western Digital is also now shipping its 24TB WD Gold CMR SATA HDD into the channel. These drives are specifically designed for system integrators and resellers serving enterprises and SMBs who need more reliable storage for big data and enterprise storage workloads compared to traditional client HDDs. Leveraging innovations from the Ultrastar technology platform, the WD Gold 24TB HDD provides up to 2.5M hours MTBF (projected), features vibration protection technology, is designed to handle workloads up to 550TB per year and comes with a 5-year limited warranty.

In terms of availability, the Western Digital Gold 24 TB is already in the shipping channels, and will most probably go for retail in a short while. However, the Ultrastar DC HC680 and HC580 HDDs are now being experimented with by the industry and are available for enterprise use only. Western Digital intends to ship the SATA versions of the HDDs initially, but they have also disclosed that "SAS-based" variants are expected to drop in the first quarter of 2024.