Feed: AnandTech
Feed Link: https://www.anandtech.com
---

Title: Western Digital: We Are Sampling 32TB SMR Hard Drives

Date: Fri, 02 Aug 2024 10:00:00 EDT
Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/21498/western-...

In an unexpected announcement during their quarterly earnings call this week,
Western Digital revealed that it has begun sampling an upcoming 32TB hard
drive. The nearline HDD is aimed at hyperscalers, and relies on a combination
of Westen Digital's EAMR technology, as well as shingled magnetic recording
(SMR) technology to hit their highest capacity figures to date.

Western Digital's 32TB HDD uses all of the company's most advanced
technologies. Besides energy-assisted magnetic recording (EAMR/ePMR 2 to be
more precise) technology, WD is also leveraging triple-stage actuators for
better positioning of heads and two-dimensional (TDMR) read heads, OptiNAND
for extra performance and reliability, distributed sector (DSEC) technology
and a proprietary error correcting code (ECC) technology. And, most
importantly, UltraSMR technology to provide additional capacity.

"We are shipping samples of our 32TB UltraSMR/ePMR nearline hard drives to
select customers," said David Goeckeler, chief executive of Western Digital,
at the earnings call. "These drives feature advanced triple-stage actuators
and OptiNAND technology which are designed for seamless qualification,
integration and deployment in hyperscale cloud and enterprise data centers
while maintaining exceptional reliability."

Seagate is currently shipping its 30TB Exos HDDs based on heat-assisted
magnetic recording (HAMR) platform called Modaic 3+ to select exascalers, and
the company has implied that it can build a 32TB version of the drive using
SMR. Therefore, from capacity point of view, Western Digital's announcement
means that the company has caught up with its rival.

As with the comapny's other UltraSMR drives, the 32TB nearline drive is aimed
at WD's enterprise customers, whose infrastructure can handle the additional
management requirements that SMR imposes. As SMR in enterprise drives is not
transparent, it's up to the host to manage many of the complexities that come
with a hard drive that isn't suited for random writes. Though at least in
WD's case, the upshot is that UltraSMR also offers a more significant density
increase than other SMR implementations, using a larger number of SMR bands
to increase HDD capacity by up to 20%.

Working backwards, that 20% capacity increase also means that WD's new drive
is starting from 2.56TB CMR platters. And while 2.56TB makes for a very
decent areal density, this would mean that WD is still behind rival Seagate
in terms of areal density overall, as Seagate has 3TB CMR platters in its
latest HAMR-based Exos drives.

---
VRSS v2.1.180528