Western Digital announces hard drives with 22 TB
Western Digital has announced two new hard drives, increasing storage capacity to 22 and 26 terabytes for the first time. The use of the high-capacity hard drives is specifically intended for scalable cloud computing.
Manufacturer Western Digital has expanded its Ultrastar hard drive lineup to 22 and 26 gigabytes, respectively. The two drives are filled with helium to further reduce the friction of the rotating platters of the 3.5-inch drives and thus accommodate more storage density in the HDD cases. The up to nine disks per drive rotate at up to 7200 rpm. A filigree motor is also on board, which keeps energy consumption low due to its three-stage design. A 512 MB DRAM cache ensures fast caching and very fast transfer speeds.
A special technology called OptiNAND is supposed to increase the number of accesses (IOPS) by up to 40 percent. The two new hard disks are to be shipped to selected Hyperscale customers soon. The 22-TB HDD will also be available in stores starting in the summer of 2022. As cloud service providers increasingly add shingled magnetic recording drives to their portfolios, the new 26TB capacity should ensure rapid adoption in the hyperscale cloud space.
