WD GOLD hard drives with 18 Terabyte Storage Volume start listing for 649 bucks
The race to 'as much storage volume as possible' on that mechanical HDD is just brutal, announced a while ago but now starting to list are 18 Terabyte HDDs from WD, the gold series in specific.
The 3.5-inch model WD181KRYZ is a unit to be found in the enterprise series WD Gold and seems to be priced in a 649 euros region. The spot of this HDD is interesting as WD does not even have a product page online just yet, but yeah it's already listed at etailers. In addition to the 18TB model, a 16TB model was released as well. The 18 TB version is listed as: 18TB GOLD 512 MB 3.5IN SATA 6GB/S 7200RPM
Before hitting that buy button, you might want to wait and see when the WD product page goes online, it is uncertain if the HDD will be CMR or SMR based.
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Junior Member
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As far as I know every GOLD drive from WD is CMR.
Senior Member
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Joined: 2013-04-05
For storage density, sure...
Also for corporations with deep pockets, sure...
But the price/capacity ratio is quite bad
- 8 TB drives can be found under $140, so 32+ TB for the price of a single 18 TB
- 14 TB drives can be found under $300, so 28 TB for less than this 18 TB
But new tech is cool, indeed !
These are for cases where you need insane density. If a drive like this lets you get away with needing 1 less server then even at a high $/TB you could still save $.
Senior Member
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Joined: 2010-01-04
This surely has to be shingled - can they really pack that much into CMR? If they did there must be something like 5 or 6 platters in there with a huge and very densely packed head assembly. I wonder how reliable that is.
Also good luck if it fails and you have to get a professional restore company to extract your 18TB off drive - I saw some only do up to 1TB for something stupid like $500+ plus cost of "donor" drive plus cost of copy-to drive, and every TB after that was extra $75 (so $75 x 17 on this)

Senior Member
Posts: 3303
Joined: 2013-03-10
This surely has to be shingled - can they really pack that much into CMR? If they did there must be something like 5 or 6 platters in there with a huge and very densely packed head assembly. I wonder how reliable that is.
Also good luck if it fails and you have to get a professional restore company to extract your 18TB off drive - I saw some only do up to 1TB for something stupid like $500+ plus cost of "donor" drive plus cost of copy-to drive, and every TB after that was extra $75 (so $75 x 17 on this)

What are the chances you lose two drives at the same time, unless it due to external factors? Nobody should keep anything important only on one drive. Of course if the model actually are faulty straight from the factory. It could theoretically happen, but such a thing would show up in user reviews, so it's not an issue, unless you are among the first people making the purchase.
Senior Member
Posts: 1696
Joined: 2008-07-16
For storage density, sure...
Also for corporations with deep pockets, sure...
But the price/capacity ratio is quite bad
- 8 TB drives can be found under $140, so 32+ TB for the price of a single 18 TB
- 14 TB drives can be found under $300, so 28 TB for less than this 18 TB
But new tech is cool, indeed !