Western Digital Unveils First 22TB CMR and 26TB UltraSMR HDDs

Western Digital unveils several new Ultrastar HDDs with capacities of 22 and 26 terabytes. The hard drives will initially be delivered to a select number of customers this summer. No pricing or actual release date has been announced yet.

The Ultrastar DC HC570 and DC HC670 have a storage capacity of 22 and 26 terabytes respectively and are intended for cloud applications. Both hard drives use WD’s OptiNAND and use shingled magnetic recording technology to write data.

For the 26TB top model, Western Digitale uses its own variant of the SMR technology, which is called UltraSMR. This writing technology, in combination with the already data density-increasing OptiNAND, would enable an 18 percent higher storage density per platter. As a result, the DC HC670 has a capacity of 2.6TB per platter. This is WD’s first use of UltraSMR technology. There is as yet no other manufacturer that has announced a 26TB hard drive.

In addition, WD is announcing that the existing Ultrastar Data60 and Data102 jbods will be equipped with 22TB HDDs based on conventional magnetic recording technology starting this summer. For the time being, the storage systems use 20TB hard drives based on SMR technology. In theory, Cmr has better random read and write speeds as an advantage over SMR, although Western Digital does not yet reveal exact specifications.

Finally, starting this summer, WD will start selling 22TB variants of the Purple Pro, Red Pro and Gold. Those series of hard drives are intended for surveillance applications, NAS systems and businesses respectively. Of these, only models with a maximum of 20TB are available for the time being. The WD Purple Pro is even only available in a maximum of 18TB.