How Western Digital is Driving Hard Disk Drive (HDD) Innovation

The increased digitalization of business operations and the proliferation of new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) has led to an explosive data growth in recent times. Hyperscalers, cloud service providers, and data centers now require enormous storage capacities to keep up with this data deluge, with factors like performance, power consumption, total cost of ownership and storage density all playing a decisive role in creating an efficient storage infrastructure.

With its decades of industry experience Western Digital is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible when it comes to data center storage and its latest HDDs are here to help address the challenge of balancing capacity and density needs. The Ultrastar® DC HC690 UltraSMR HDD has up to 32 TB of storage, with a sequential transfer rate of up to 257 MiB/s. And the Ultrastar® DC HC590 HDD, which uses the traditional CMR recording technology, enables a continuous increase in capacity with 26 TB and sustained transfer rates of up to 288 MiB/s.

Storage Capacity and Density Now Go Hand in Hand

What is remarkable about these HDDs is that, despite their higher capacities, they are not physically larger than their predecessor models. This makes them  a great solution for data centers and is something primarily made possible by innovative technologies, like the Energy-Assisted Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (ePMR).

The PMR process requires a certain minimum energy to ensure stable magnetization of the bits. With ePMR, electricity is used to generate an additional magnetic field to support the magnetization process of data bits. The field creates a preferred path for “switching” the bits, i.e. rewriting the data and this means that less magnetic energy is required from the write head itself. The additional magnetic field ensures a more stable and uniformed magnetization of the bits, which minimizes so-called “jitter” effects. This is where unwanted irregularities can lead to inefficient use of storage space. By reducing jitter, the bits can be placed closer together, and therefore the storage density of the hard disk increases.

Working together: Why SMR and ePMR complement each other perfectly

ePMR has a particularly positive effect in combination with Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR), the storage recording format with overlapping tracks. With SMR, more data can be written to the same space and like ePMR, it is therefore great for increasing the storage capacity on a hard drive without increasing its physical space requirements.

SMR hard drives are best suited for long sequential writes where the system is continuously writing data to the medium, such as for data backup or archiving. In combination with ePMR, these two technologies enable an increase in tracks-per-inch (TPI), allowing more storage capacity so data centre operators can maximise their storage efficiency. This results in benefits such as increased computing power in minimal space, improved energy efficiency, lower total cost of ownership (TCO), scalability and flexibility.

Shaping the Future of HDD Technology

With data centers growing in importance and prominence - especially hyperscalers and cloud providers - there is an increasing need to look for optimized storage solutions that can keep up with the vast amounts of data at scale while lowering TCO to ensure storage efficiency and economic viability.

By combining field-proven designs with the latest innovative technologies, such as UltraSMR® and Western Digital’s propriety OptiNAND™ technology, which leverages integrated iNAND™ embedded flash for housekeeping functions, data centers will address the different needs of various applications and enable higher capacity storage without having to compromise on density.  

Data Centers and organizations interested in learning more about Western Digital’s HDD offerings can start their journey here.