Western Digital promises 100TB HDDs by 2029
With its pivot to HAMR, Western Digital aims to deliver 100TB+ HDDs
Western Digital has promised to launch 100TB HDDs by 2029, delivering a 2.5x increase in storage density over the next three years. This year, Western Digital will launch 40TB HDDs. This drive is their ePMR 40TB UltraSMR HDD, which enters volume production later this year.
Moving forward, Western Digital aims to make HDDs more performant and storage-dense. This will make HDDs more competitive against flash storage, maintaining their cost advantage while lessening their performance limitations.
Moving from ePMR to HAMR
Western Digital are investing in two rival HDD technologies, energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording (ePMR) and heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR). By investing in both, Western Digital aims to ensure it can deliver the highest-capacity HDDs, with this year seeing the launch of a 40TB ePMR HDD.
In time, Western Digital plans to release ePMR drives with capacities of up to 60TB. However, long-term HAMR technology will reign supreme. With HAMR, Western Digital has a roadmap for drives exceeding 100TB. With ePMR, Western Digital’s roadmap falls short of that storage density target.
Up to 140TB HDDs are possible!
With 14 platters and storage densities of “up to 10TB” per platter, Western Digital believes that HAMR-based HDDs can scale to 140TB. This will make HDDs more cost-effective, keeping HDD technology relevant in the long term.
Western Digital’s current roadmap extends to at least 2032. That means that they see HDD scaling into the next decade. Not only will future HDDs be more storage dense, they will also be faster.
More Speed!
Yesterday, we wrote about Western Digital’s new “High Bandwidth Drive” and “Dual Pivot” technologies. With these technologies, Western Digital aims to boost the bandwidth and I/O capacity of HDDs to make them more competitive with flash storage. This will allow Western Digital to deliver comparable (or higher) performance per TB to existing HDDs despite significant increases in storage density.
With High Bandwidth Drive technology, Western Digital can already deliver users a 2x bandwidth boost by delivering “simultaneous reading and writing from multiple heads on multiple tracks”. This change comes with no power penalties, meaning users will get more performance per watt. Furthermore, Western Digital has plans to scale performance gains to 8x bandwidth. Drives based on this technology are already in customers’ hands for validation.
2x Pivots = 2x I/O
With Dual Pivot technology, Western Digital is adding a second pivot arm to its HDDs. This additional actuator will deliver a 2x increase in sequential I/O in a 3.5-inch drive. Western Digital’s design adds an extra actuator without sacrificing HDD capacity or requiring client-side software changes. As far as users are concerned, this is a standard HDD, but faster. Western Digital also claims that its dual-pivot design reduces spacing between disks, potentially allowing more platters to be fitted into each drive, boosting overall capacity.
Western Digital’s Dual Pivot and High Bandwidth technologies can be used together. They also claim that this can deliver a 4x boost in I/O performance. This can enable 100TB HDDs with the I/O-per-terabyte performance of today’s HDDs.
Western Digital’s High Bandwidth Drive technology is already in customers’ hands for testing. HDDs with Dual-Pivot technology are currently in Western Digital’s labs and are scheduled for release in 2028.
You can join the discussion on Western Digital’s 100TB+ HDD plans on the OC3D Forums.
