Western Digital announces release dates for 100 TB hard drives |
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During a major conference, Western Digital shared its plans for the development of hard drives (HDDs) in the coming years. The company presented several key technologies that should lead to the release of drives with a capacity of 100 TB and above in the future. The long-term roadmap looks extremely ambitious. WD is already testing 40-terabyte UltraSMR ePMR HDDs, with mass production scheduled for the second half of 2026. In the future, ePMR is planned to be increased to 60 TB, and HAMR to 100 TB by 2029, without increasing power consumption and with a unified architectural approach. The theoretical limit of these technologies is 140 TB with a density of 10 TB per platter and 14 platters. On the way to the emergence of 100 TB hard drives, WD intends to implement Dual Pivot and High Bandwidth Drive technologies to increase data transfer speeds. The first provides a twofold increase in sequential I/O speed by introducing a second fully independent actuator on a separate axis, which allows tracks to be served in parallel. High Bandwidth Drive is responsible for simultaneous reading and writing from multiple heads, providing up to 8 times the throughput. |
