Western Digital Introduces New Non-SMR 20TB HDDs with Onboard NAND
upstart writes:
Western Digital introduces new non-SMR 20TB HDDs with onboard NAND:
At Western Digital's HDD Reimagine Event yesterday, the company introduced its newest hard drive architecture-a hybrid spinning rust/NAND flash design it calls OptiNAND. But as WD President of Technology and Strategy Dr. Siva Sivaram told Ars in an interview, OptiNAND bears almost no resemblance to the much-maligned hybrid SSHD drives first introduced in 2011 and 2012.
Instead of promising SSD-like speeds via caching of customer data, OptiNAND offers increased areal density by removing firmware-accessible metadata from the disk itself and storing it on NAND instead.
The most tangible milestone achieved by Western Digital's newly announced architecture is a nine-platter, 20TB drive that does not require Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) techniques. The new disk uses a subset of Western Digital's EAMR technology, which has been rebranded ePMR-presumably to emphasize that it's not SMR, which has severe performance and usability implications for many common workloads.
[...] The 20TB OptiNAND disks are currently in the early stages of production, with samples shipping to select Western Digital enterprise customers only. However, the technology is expected to serve as "the foundation for future designs and innovations" across Western Digital's entire rotational storage product line, with market-specific products becoming available later this year.
See also:
- https://www.tomshardware.com/news/western-digital-unveils-optinand-architecture-for-hdds
- https://www.anandtech.com/show/16920/western-digital-reimagines-hdd-flash-integration-with-optinand
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