Can Western Digital Really Reimagine the Hard-Disk Drive?

September 16, 2021

Blog

The headline is “Western Digital Reimagines the Hard Drive.” Is that even possible? Can there really be something revolutionary in the hard-drive space? Apparently there is, as the company has come up with a flash-enhanced drive architecture that breaks traditional storage boundaries.

Combining flash memory with a rotating disk drive isn’t new, but WD’s OptiNAND technology optimizes the two in a way that hasn’t been done before. Basically, it’s a combination of the company’s traditional hard drives with its iNAND embedded flash drives, in the same package. Such a configuration is well suited for applications like hyperscale Cloud, CSPs, enterprises, and smart video surveillance.

The new drives leverage the company’s triple-stage actuator (TSA) and HelioSeal technology to deliver 2.2 Tbytes/platter. One of the sampling drives is built with nine platters for a full capacity that’s rated at 20 Tbytes.

While capacity is a key spec, the use of flash ensures that performance does not take a back seat. The architecture requires fewer adjacent track interference (ATI) refreshes and reduces the need for write cache flushes in write cache-enabled mode.

In short order, all of the WD’s drives will offer a flash-enabled alternative. In addition, market-specific offerings will be available later this year.

For more information, visit: www.westerndigital.com/