Western digital, its 18 and 20 tb hard drives will be launched in 2020

Western Digital released a press release stating that it has started sampling 18TB and 20TB hard drives, the latter using SMR technology.

The new hard drives are the Ultrastar DC HC650 SMR and the Ultrastar DC HC550 CMR

SMR is the abbreviation for 'shingled magnetic recording', which will be a kind of intermediate step to be able to manufacture larger HAMR based hard drives.

Western Digital announced that it has begun shipping the industry's largest capacity hard drive samples to original equipment manufacturers and hyperscale customers worldwide. Introduced for the first time in June 2019 and announced in September 2019, Ultrastar DC HC650 SMR 20TB HDDs and 18TB Ultrastar DC HC550 CMR hard drives unveil their first commercial deployment of energy-assisted magnetic recording technology on a nine-disk platform, enabling customers to more efficiently provision and scale their data center environments at lower cost.

Western Digital's new Ultrastar 20TB SMR and 18TB CMR HelioSeal hard drives enable users to deploy up to 22% fewer racks and reduce their total cost of ownership by up to 11%, along with corresponding reductions in power consumption, cooling costs, and data center infrastructure needs, compared to today's 14TB CMR hard drives.

Visit our guide on the best hard drives on the market

The discs now use nine turntables, so higher performance is achieved in addition to the new SMR and CMR recording systems.

Western Digital is now sampling the 20TB Ultrastar DC HC650 SMR Hard Drive and 18TB Ultrastar DC HC550 CMR Hard Drive, with shipping volume and qualification expected to take place in the first half of 2020. We will keep you informed.

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