Western Digital recently announced new data center HDDs that increase Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) capacity to 32TB and Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) capacity to 26TB. The company.
The big picture: Although consumers have largely transitioned to fast and durable solid-state drives, data centers and other sectors requiring mass storage still rely on disk drives. Competitors Western Digital and Seagate have spent years pushing the limits of HDD storage, developing various technologies to edge past the 30TB mark while reducing costs and power consumption.
Western Digital recently announced new data center HDDs that increase Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) capacity to 32TB and Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) capacity to 26TB. The company achieved these unprecedented capacities by squeezing an 11th platter to the industry-standard HDD form factor, making the new products compatible with existing infrastructure.
The 32TB Ultrastar DC HC690 represents the next step in Western Digital’s implementation of Ultra Shingled Magnetic Recording (UltraSMR) technology, which arranges data tracks in overlapping layers.
