Western Digital Starts sampling 20 TB HDDs with SMR and 18 TB HDDs with CMR
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Kaarme
Good to see both Seagate and Western Digital are still in the spinning HD business for real. Although that being said, they both know it's a sunset business. They seem intent on getting everything out of it before the end, nonetheless. Well, there's Toshiba as well, but who knows for how long. Toshiba barely avoided a bankruptcy as it is, and HDDs aren't any goldmine any longer.
Venix
@Kaarme well yeah for desktop PCs it is on the way out , but data centers backup systems etc i think they have still a long way ahead of em if we consider there is still market for backup tapes even!
JOHN30011887
I just want something bigger than my wd black 6tb for all my games that isnt HelioSeal, i just just like the sound of it, with people saying over the years it will leak puts me right off buying one
Kaarme
Yeah, but there are only so many data centers, while there are a billion potential private consumers. B2B is also a kind of thankless business. It only cares about the bottom line and that's it. Samsung dropped out of the HDD business years ago because it wasn't worth it. Hitachi sold its storage division to WD. Well, it has to be profitable for WD and Seagate for the time being or they wouldn't continue R&D, but I see it as much worse than the market for internal combustion engines and many other technologies that don't have a glorious future anymore ahead of them. Floppy disks went the way of the dodo, beaten by solid state. HDDs have put up a much better fight, but the fate of the dinosaurs lies upon them, nonetheless.
kakiharaFRS
something people need to consider before looking at large capacity drives, they are noisy (especially the 2019 ones) it's something I never tought about before getting the red wolf 12Tb, had to return them, crazy loud mechanical noise, the kind that make people go berzerk
I recommend the HGST ones (lots of WD are technically still HGST, the firmware is the same and hardware monitoring list them as HGST not WD)
Kaarme
Haha, yeah. I know a person who placed their NAS in another room and drilled a hole in the wall for the cat cable to get rid of the noise.
HeavyHemi
There are more data centers being built and of course our usage and storage of data increases exponentially. The example you listed of a Floppy disk is a bad analog considering in how short a time it became irrelevant due to it's tiny capacity.
There's no CAPACITY GAP between spinners and SSD. There is a speed gap which can mostly be mitigated by using arrays. So, basically the MAIN distinction between spinners and solid state is access speed. And even there that can be mitigated through caching schemes to where recent and commonly used data is held in faster SSD storage. Spinners will be around for awhile yet because they still have a purpose that is cost effective.
Kaarme
The exact moment they stop being cost effective the data centers will drop them like a rock, though. Seagate and WD just need to be able to predict that point. I guess they will be able to. It's not like they wouldn't be involved in the solid state as well. I'm not saying it will happen next year or any time soon, but sooner or later the unnecessary mechanical motion and its weaknesses will cease.
anticupidon
Only that lately HGST drives just got expensive.
Gotta" blame" the BackBlaze hard drive statistics, ain't?
kroks
Bigger capacity is nice but the price keep getting bigger too... 20tb 1000€?
Venix
Well yeah the moment ssds are roughly equal the hdds will be dropped from datacenters like hot potatoes! For the consumer market even home nas i think the breaking point is 2/1 ratio if say a 2tb ssd cost as much a 4tb spinner i do not think anyone would pickup the spinner even on the non enthusiasts market . I mean enthusiasts dropped em a while ago and just keep em only for big bulky files that access times are not a big deal at all 😛
GamerBoyManuel16
I'd be too scared to store all my data on such a large single drive
Except you have 2 of them and keep 2 copies of your data all time i'd go for smaller drivers and store data distributed
as when one fails it's more likely you won't loose something important
But i see need for larger capacities for Providers such as google with their drive or Dropbox ..
user1
naw, the hgst brand is now defunct so there are a limited number of drives branded as such,they are now branded as western digital, you can still get them as western digital Ultrastar /deskstar drives, still expensive, though i figure the prices will comedown as soon as the brand transition is complete
geogan
I have two 10TB Enterprise Western Digital EXOS drives (as well as two older 6TB WD drives)... the 10TB Enterprise work perfectly and no failures yet but have annoying constant clicking noises like the noise of constant writing... apparently it's normal for them.... I wouldn't recommend Enterprise drives for this reason any more - I only got them because they were cheaper second hand drives (think it was €150 each for 10TB, so €300 for 20TB).
I would love to replace my 4 drives 32TB storage, with less and bigger drives, like 2 x 20TB drives.
slyphnier
first both SSD and HDD server different purpose
then with current pricing that NAND still need catching up to HDD level
and then some people might forget that NAND nowdays isnt created for durability anymore
3D QLC NAND is endurance is like ~1000 ... so while indeed the capacity increasing fast, but high cycle will wear out those much faster than before.
in some sense (especially for home-user) its not issue, as more space mean less write on same block, so everything back to the user
while on HDD side, there still some way to increase capacity... its not like "dead-end" anyway
and those hdd maker still making profit from HDD
so yeah HDD wont going anywhere anytime soon in like decade or so
some reading : https://www.horizontechnology.com/hdd-vs-ssd-and-the-future-of-enterprise-computing-storage-market-brief-july-2019/
