Western Digital: New hard disks come to 22 TB with CMR, 26 TB with SMR

Western Digital’s hard drives are increasing in size. At the “”What’s Next Western Digital”” event, the manufacturer unveiled two new Ultrastar series hard drives that come in at a whopping 26 TB SMR and 22 TB CMR.

UltraStar DC HC570 with 22 TB

An additional magnetic disk is used in the Western Digital UltraStar DC HC570 compared to its predecessor, which increases the capacity from 20 TB to 22 TB. A total of ten platters, each with 2.2 TB of storage space, find room in the 3.5-inch chassis, resulting in around 1.1 terabits per square inch.

Here, the data density has already been noticeably increased in advance thanks to OptiNAND technology, while a built-in NAND memory provides additional space for hard drive metadata with CMR.

Western Digital UltraStar DC HC670: 26 TB thanks to UltraSMR

The Western Digital UltraStar DC HC670, on the other hand, brings it to a whole 26 terabytes. This is made possible by the new UltraSMR technology, a new version of SMR that is supposed to feature an advanced error correction algorithm. Thanks to an overlap of the tracks, a capacity per magnetic disk (again, a total of 10 platters) of 2.6 TB is made possible – that’s 1.3 terabits per square inch.

“With UltraSMR technology, Western Digital combines OptiNAND with proprietary firmware that builds on HDD system-level advancements,” the manufacturer’s press release states.

The new technology is said to combine large block encoding with an advanced error correction algorithm for the first time, increasing the number of tracks per inch (TPI). This enables completely new capacities, such as the 26 TB model with SMR.

Both models are primarily aimed at operators of cloud storage servers, since the read performance of the hard disks is clearly more in demand in this area. At the same time, the 64 GB OptiNAND is supposed to provide an additional performance boost.

For this purpose, IOPS and data throughput are additionally accelerated in operating mode with write cache disabled, as the manufacturer further explains in a document. Here, one is supposed to benefit from additional data security in WCD mode without the hard drive losing performance.

Prices and availability

The two new hard drives Western Digital UltraStar DC HC570 and Western Digital UltraStar DC HC670 should be available in the summer of 2022, but probably not in regular stores. However, the models are already shipping to select hyperscale customers.

At the same time, the UltraStar Data60 and Data102 platforms are supposed to grow to 22 TB capacity, which should speak for a timely release of the consumer solutions in the WD Red, WD Red Pro or WD Purple series.