Western digital presents its new ultrastar 7k6 and ultrastar 7k8 hdd

Western Digital is expanding its line of business-focused Ultrastar hard drives with the HGST Ultrastar 7K6 and Ultrastar 7K8 drives, which will come in 4TB, 6TB and 8TB capacities.

The new units are intended for business configurations that do not require a lot of storage space per unit and prioritize cost and reliability more.

Ultrastar 7K6

The new Ultrastar 7K6 comes in 4TB and 6TB capacities. The unit uses a new business-class 4-plate design, and won't be helium-filled like its older siblings. From a performance standpoint, the new Ultrastar 7K6 is 12% faster than the previous generation Ultrastar 7K6000. And that is always a good thing. This hard drive is built for traditional storage and server applications, as well as scalable and distributed computing. This also includes the file and block storage architecture.

Ultrastar 7K8

The Ultrastar 7K8 will launch later this quarter with an 8TB solution. This is also an air-based design like the Ultrastar 7K6. It is the ninth generation of Western Digital air-based discs and uses 5 platters.

General specifications

Both the new Ultrastar 7K6 and Ultrastar 7K8 come with an enterprise-class MTBF rating that ensures 2 million hours of use. Both will also be available in SAS and SATA versions with a speed of 7200RPM and an average latency of 4.16 ms. Both Western Digital models use a 256MB cache.

We do not know the price of both models at the moment.

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