Western Digital is Shipping its 22 TB WD Gold, Red Pro and Purple Pro Hard Disk Drives

[TheLostSwede]

When it comes to data, everything is growing - quantity, size, format, resolution, use cases, applications, value and more. As people and businesses look for solutions to effectively and efficiently store their data in the zettabyte era, Western Digital HDDs continue to play a critical role in delivering massive capacity, performance and reliability.

Extending its innovation and technology leadership across its portfolio, Western Digital today announced that it is now shipping new 22 TB HDDs targeting three key segments: WD Gold HDDs for IT/data center channel customers; WD Red Pro for network attached storage (NAS); and WD Purple Pro for smart video/surveillance. As highlighted in its What's Next Western Digital Event, these new drives are loaded with industry-firsts, including OptiNAND technology, energy-assisted PMR (ePMR), triple-stage actuator (TSA) and HelioSeal to deliver the industry's highest areal density at 2.2 TB per platter, delivering 22 TB CMR HDDs for its customers.




"We are thrilled to reach this milestone as HDDs are complex and sophisticated systems," said Ravi Pendekanti, senior vice president of product management and marketing, HDD Business Unit at Western Digital. "From the cloud to the edge, Western Digital's hard drives play a vital role in storing, protecting, capturing and analyzing data that's shaping nearly every aspect of our digital lives. Our technology leadership and expanded portfolio of industry-leading HDDs provide us with a tremendous opportunity to deliver value to our customers today and well into the future."

WD Gold Enterprise-Class HDDs for Data Center Storage Systems
Cloud and enterprise data center architects continue to squeeze every drop of investment out of their IT infrastructure. The economics of storing every bit matters, and factors like capacity, density, energy use, sustainability and more all play a critical role in helping to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO). Moving to the industry's highest available CMR HDD capacity can help. Western Digital's new enterprise-class, 22 TB WD Gold CMR HDD with OptiNAND technology gives users the ability to lower TCO by increasing storage in the same footprint or by reducing racks, which can help reduce costs such as adding more racks, network, power, cooling, cabling, etc. Unique to Western Digital is its OptiNAND-enabled ArmorCache technology that combines the performance of write cache enabled mode with the data protection of write cache disabled mode without having to compromise by choosing between the two. With a full portfolio of solutions ranging from 1 TB-22 TB, these highly reliable WD Gold HDDs are ideal for demanding storage environments, providing up to 2.5M hours MTBF, vibration protection technology and a low power draw thanks to HelioSeal technology (for 12 TB and above).

WD Red Pro HDDs Support All Major NAS Systems with Up to 24 Bays
Work from home has accelerated and many small office/home office (SOHO) workers and SMBs are struggling to keep up with rapidly growing amounts of data. The new 22 TB WD Red Pro CMR HDD with OptiNAND technology is ideal for those who have high-capacity storage needs, or for those who have reached the maximum capacity on their existing network-attached storage (NAS) system. Engineered specifically for NAS systems with up to 24 bays, WD Red Pro HDDs are optimized for multi-user environments and are designed to handle high-intensity workloads in 24x7 environments. WD Red Pro HDDs are ideal for storing, protecting, archiving, and sharing massive amounts of data with many users and can handle multiple data-hungry applications such as file sync and sharing, backup/archive, multimedia repository, and private cloud storage. The WD Red Pro family comes in capacities ranging from 2 TB to 22 TB.

WD Purple Pro HDDs for Advanced AI-Enabled, Always-on Smart Video Recorders, Appliances and Servers
Smart video surveillance is on the rise, bringing increased storage requirements along with it. For example, high-resolution cameras are capturing multiple video, picture and metadata streams per camera; AI and video analytics are placing new demands on quantity, quality and retention of video data; and deep-learning solutions are needing more video to train AI algorithms, all while video-surveillance-as-a-service (VSaaS) customers are needing purpose-built storage to efficiently manage this data at scale. The 22 TB WD Purple Pro CMR HDD with OptiNAND technology delivers big capacity to address these trends in a purpose-built enterprise-class drive supporting video analytics servers and AI and deep-learning systems. The drive features Western Digital's exclusive AllFrame AI technology that supports 32 AI streams for deep-learning analytics within the system while helping to reduce dropped frames. WD Purple Pro drives are optimized to handle up to 64 single-stream HD cameras as well as many of the latest smart cameras that transmit multiple streams. It offers high reliability with a MTBF of up to 2.5 million hours for advanced smart video solutions that operate in 24/7 environments. The WD Purple Pro HDD family now comes in 8 TB-22 TB capacities.

Western Digital's industry-leading Ultrastar 22 TB CMR HDDs and 26 TB UltraSMR HDDs began shipping to select hyperscale cloud customers in June.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[MIRTAZAPINE]

22TB and still CMR HDD that is amazing. I would have thought they are already using SMR to push such capacity.

 

[zlobby]

22TB and still CMR HDD that is amazing. I would have thought they are already using SMR to push such capacity.

Indeed. I just wonder how they keep the helium inside? That thing has molecules so small that they just pass through almost anything given enough time.

 

[Blaazen]

Indeed. I just wonder how they keep the helium inside? That thing has molecules so small that they just pass through almost anything given enough time.

They don't need to keep all helium inside forever. They just need to keep there enough helium for the expected lifetime of the disc (a few years more than warranty, I hope).

 

[RegaeRevaeb]

They don't need to keep all helium inside forever. They just need to keep there enough helium for the expected lifetime of the disc (a few years more than warranty, I hope).

Long enough for that RAID rebuild (I hope).

 

[shilka]

I might be interested in a 22 TB WD Gold if the 22 TB Seagate Exos dont get released this year
There have been no new info about any 22 TB drives from Seagate in a while

I would like to replace older my 14 and 16 TB drives

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Indeed. I just wonder how they keep the helium inside? That thing has molecules so small that they just pass through almost anything given enough time.

I think its more like how do they keep the normal outside. In both cases, its about the pressure difference, like a balloon floating up and up, the higher it gets the bigger it gets from less dense air. The pressure at 0, feet/cm/whatever, above sea level is higher than at 10k above.

So to answer you, its the glue they use.

 

[zlobby]

I think its more like how do they keep the normal outside. In both cases, its about the pressure difference, like a balloon floating up and up, the higher it gets the bigger it gets from less dense air. The pressure at 0, feet/cm/whatever, above sea level is higher than at 10k above.

So to answer you, its the glue they use.

Nope. Helium atoms are so tiny that they can pass right through any other molecule. Pressure and heat only help this process. Hence my question.

They don't need to keep all helium inside forever. They just need to keep there enough helium for the expected lifetime of the disc (a few years more than warranty, I hope).

Long enough for that RAID rebuild (I hope).

I'm gonna click 'Decline'.

 

[Tomorrow]

Indeed. I just wonder how they keep the helium inside? That thing has molecules so small that they just pass through almost anything given enough time.

Helium drives have been on the market long enough now and have provem themselves reliable over 5+ years.

 

[Denver]

Indeed. I just wonder how they keep the helium inside? That thing has molecules so small that they just pass through almost anything given enough time.

They can't. The gas will eventually leak out after a few years.

 

[MarsM4N]

Indeed. I just wonder how they keep the helium inside? That thing has molecules so small that they just pass through almost anything given enough time.

A thin layer of kryptonite coating in the inside.

 

[Tomgang]

Just a heads up and one that have the 14 tb gold drive. For those noise sensitive, the gold drive is not recommended. It's fast for a hard drive, but also rather noisy and like most normal desktop hdd that goes to ilde when not used. Gold drives goes not to ilde and you can hear the read arms move constantly.

In short i am not buying a gold drive again. It's fast and reliable, but the noise is to much and annoying. It's for server amd enterprise use and not for normal desktop use where noise it not so important.

 

[MIRTAZAPINE]

They don't need to keep all helium inside forever. They just need to keep there enough helium for the expected lifetime of the disc (a few years more than warranty, I hope).

Shucks I guess I have to refresh my archieval stuff in WD HDD I got their mostly helium drives in a few year time. I have the 20TB ultrastar version. Copying stuff out for this capacity is gonna be a huge pain, it took me 18 hours to fully write this hdd.

Just a heads up and one that have the 14 tb gold drive. For those noise sensitive, the gold drive is not recommended. It's fast for a hard drive, but also rather noisy and like most normal desktop hdd that goes to ilde when not used. Gold drives goes not to ilde and you can hear the read arms move constantly.

In short i am not buying a gold drive again. It's fast and reliable, but the noise is to much and annoying. It's for server amd enterprise use and not for normal desktop use where noise it not so important.

I never tried the gold version before but I am a WD enterprise ultrastar user. Just to add on it seems like it depends on luck for server grade hdd to be quiet I not. I have 2 ultrastar hdd of the same capacity. One is quiet but the other is absolutely loud. I am not sure if this is a hdd platter balancing issue but it seems to pass wd testing for them to sell it.

 

[Tomgang]

Shucks I guess I have to refresh my archieval stuff in WD HDD I got their mostly helium drives in a few year time. I have the 20TB ultrastar version. Copying stuff out for this capacity is gonna be a huge pain, it took me 18 hours to fully write this hdd.



I never tried the gold version before but I am a WD enterprise ultrastar user. Just to add on it seems like it depends on luck for server grade hdd to be quiet I not. I have 2 ultrastar hdd of the same capacity. One is quiet but the other is absolutely loud. I am not sure if this is a hdd platter balancing issue but it seems to pass wd testing for them to sell it.

Yeah well it was just a friendly warning to others might consider a gold drive. It's not silent at all, example compared to my older wd red 4 tb hdd. It's so much more silent. In fact I can barely hear the red drive while gold happily clicks and makes noises all the time. Even in ilde, the read heads does not park.

I am personally not going for a gold drive again. So would I rather have a slower drive, that is more silent amd it is not like I am particularly noisy sensitive. I have 2 noctua ippc 3000 RPM fans on my cpu cooler and they are not silent fans either at full blast.

 

[R-T-B]

They can't. The gas will eventually leak out after a few years.

They can. They've been doing it. Longevity has been shown to be 5+ years in practice, as some of the oldest drives are still spinning.

I've owned an 18TB Helium CMR Ultrastar for over 2 years with no issue so far. It even has some form of HAMR, aparently.

All I can say is they manage and most of the research was done at HGST shortly before their buyout. I'm sure it's a big secret patent thing.

 

[Denver]

They can. They've been doing it. Longevity has been shown to be 5+ years in practice, as some of the oldest drives are still spinning.

I've owned an 18TB Helium CMR Ultrastar for over 2 years with no issue so far. It even has some form of HAMR, aparently.

All I can say is they manage and most of the research was done at HGST shortly before their buyout. I'm sure it's a big secret patent thing.

Exactly like I said, the warranty is 5 years and that's what they estimate the product will last. This creates a problem for those who are going to buy the HDD to keep files for a long time as a backup.