Western Digital launches 32TB hard drive in SATA and SAS flavors — Ultrastar DC HC690 delivers sequential performance up to 257 MiB/s

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SMR-based tech gets WD to 32TB.

Ultrastar DC HC690
(Image credit: Western Digital)

Western Digital’s newly launched ePMR-powered UltraSMR HDDs can store up to 32TB, a new record for shingled magnetic recording-based drives.

Thanks to ePMR, which WD has used since 2020 to improve HDD capacity, and the storage company’s much newer UltraSMR technology, WD introduced an 11-disk design for the 32TB Ultrastar DC HC690. WD’s previous champion, the Ultrastar DC HC680, had 28TB of storage thanks to a 10-disk design and was the company’s first drive to use UltraSMR tech.

While the HC690 does have 4TB or roughly 14% more storage than its predecessor, its performance is slightly down. The HC680 hit 265 MB/s, but WD says the HC690 is rated for 257 MB/s. Although a 3% performance loss doesn’t sound like much, it would eventually make a noticeable difference in a long read or write operation.

WD touts that large drives like the HC690 are ideal for AI computers since a large amount of data is required to train AI models, which can also create lots of data (like faked video game trailers) once up and running. Ultimately, the HC690 is just a bigger storage device, so WD might discuss its suitability for AI simply because it’s the current zeitgeist.

It may seem strange to use a traditional storage medium for AI rather than much newer solid-state drives, but SSDs are still relatively expensive for the capacity they offer. HDDs are a much more cost-effective solution for long-term data storage, where performance is less of a priority, perhaps even for AI.

WD also announced the 26TB Ultrastar DC HC590, which uses conventional magnetic reading (CMR) technology and is a direct successor to the 24TB HC580. This CMR-based drive also has a slight performance reduction compared to its predecessor: 288MB/s, down from 298MB/s. WD Gold variants of the 26TB HDD are also available.

Although WD is currently the density champion, its rivals are working on their next-generation drives with as much capacity, if not more. In May, Toshiba claimed it achieved 32TB using heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology and 31TB using microwave-assisted recording (MAMR).

For its part, Seagate is researching multi-level HAMR technology, which the storage company hopes will allow it to make 120TB or larger HDDs by 2030. This would be accomplished by using multiple storage layers on a single disk that could potentially have 10TB of storage, much higher than the ~3TB disks that WD uses in its latest HDDs.

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Matthew Connatser
Matthew Connatser

Matthew Connatser is a freelancing writer for Tom's Hardware US. He writes articles about CPUs, GPUs, SSDs, and computers in general.

20 Comments Comment from the forums
  • JRStern
    Form factor?
    Just friggin' amazing, assuming the form factor is somewhat smaller than a horse.
    Reply
  • evdjj3j
    JRStern said:
    Form factor?
    Just friggin' amazing, assuming the form factor is somewhat smaller than a horse.
    Looks like a standard 3.5" HDD.
    Reply
  • derekullo
    I had read that SMR wasn't good in raids which is how I am assuming a data center would be using it?
    Reply
  • bit_user
    SMR? SMH!
    Reply
  • bit_user
    The article said:
    Although a 3% performance loss doesn’t sound like much, it would eventually make a noticeable difference in a long read or write operation.
    The problem is that you want performance to increase as drives get larger. Otherwise, it takes even longer to do things like scrub, rebuild, and back them up. The longer they take, the greater the chance there is of (another) failure happening, before they complete!

    derekullo said:
    I had read that SMR wasn't good in raids which is how I am assuming a data center would be using it?
    It's like a QLC SSD, where there's a low-density buffer. Once you exhaust that, write performance takes a major hit. Some RAID controllers don't like it when operations have super long latency and they treat such a drive as if it failed.

    There are other ways to use these drives, in datacenter context. If you're doing object-based storage, you can use object-level replication, which allows each drive to be run as an independent storage volume.
    Reply
  • wwenze1
    HDD sequential speeds are not increasing that much since 1TB days... luckily they are mostly being used for data hoarding so it doesn't really matter...
    Reply
  • bit_user
    wwenze1 said:
    HDD sequential speeds are not increasing that much since 1TB days... luckily they are mostly being used for data hoarding so it doesn't really matter...
    They tend to increase at basically a square root of the density. The double-actuator drives have doubled the throughput, but basically act like 2 HDDs merged together in one package, where each head can only access half of the capacity. It also adds cost and requires OS support.

    I already said what the problems are with it. If you actually care about the data on them, then you should care about things like scrubbing and rebuild times. Even for backups, it becomes problematic if you can't even complete a backup of your data before you already want to start the next one.
    Reply
  • Hartemis
    11 disks in 3.5"!
    Why doesn't the industry try to introduce a new standard form factor, to expend the current constraints of high-capacity storage?
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Hartemis said:
    11 disks in 3.5"!
    Why doesn't the industry try to introduce a new standard form factor, to expend the current constraints of high-capacity storage?
    How many platters do you think it should have?

    At some point, it makes sense just to increase the number of drives, because throughput doesn't scale by adding platters. Only one platter can be read/written at a time (except for dual-actuator drives). Also, putting too much data in a single unit just multiplies the cost of a hardware failure.

    I'm not saying I think the current 3.5" form factor is optimal, but it's probably not far off.
    Reply
  • Hartemis
    bit_user said:
    Only one platter can be read/written at a time (except for dual-actuator drives).
    Why aren't they in RAID0 together?

    Consumers need to buy more disks. But manufacturers are obliged to increase the capacity of their units. It's the only way to make progress (and by improving performance too).
    They can't say: “Well, we'll stop here, and you'll just have to buy more units”.

    I just notice that they're always trying to add more and more platters in the same form factor constraint, to reduce magnetic cell size again and again, to increase density on the same platter size (isn't there the same pitfall as MLC=>QLC=>PLC when it comes to long-term data retention?), but never tried to increase case height or disc diameter by proposing a new standard.
    At some point, won't they have to come to that, when they reach the technical limits of existing runways, without exploding costs?

    Maybe 5"1/4?
    Reply