26TB and 22TB drives from Western Digital, with some exciting new SSDs


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New large-capacity hard drives will flourish in the ranges of Western Digital, which is also improving its offer of high-performance SSDs in M.2 or external format.

Western Digital announces the marketing in the coming weeks of two new high-capacity 3.5″ hard drive references, which can respectively store 26 and 22 TB of data.

The 26TB Ultrastar DC HC670 will join the American manufacturer’s range of professional drives. Like the other high-capacity models in the WD Red Pro range, it will make use of SMR technology (shingled magnetic recording) to increase the amount of data stored on each platter. SMR, as a reminder, consists of overlapping the tracks on the platters of the hard disks, which complicates the processes of writing data and leads to rewrites which can have consequences on performance (especially when writing large quantities data) and longevity. It is nevertheless the technology which currently allows manufacturers to achieve the greatest capacities, pending the democratization and improvement of the HAMR.

© Western Digital

The new Western Digital 22 TB drive – which should quickly be found in various references from the Ultrastar, WD Purple, WD Red or even WD Gold ranges – uses CMR technology to increase its storage capacity while maintaining a high level of performance. The CMR (or PMR, for perpendicular magnetic recording) is now a technology widely used by hard drive manufacturers but, to our knowledge, the highest capacity models using it reach 20 TB. Western Digital could therefore be the first to market 22 TB products using it. This type of disk is generally considered more versatile than those using SMR, a technology that is rather reserved for pure storage.

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In either case, no tariff has yet been advanced.

© Western Digital

Alongside these announcements, Western Digital also presented new SSDs, mainly intended for professionals (high performance servers and PC manufacturers) or “power users” such as the WD Black SN850X SSD, an evolution of the SN850 displaying a speed theoretically up to 7.3 GB per second. We have already deciphered its capabilities in this article.

We will also remember the announcement of the WD Black P40 Game Drive SSD, an external SSD oriented gaming with customizable LED lighting, boasting speeds of up to 2 GB per second provided you can use fairly fast USB (or Thunderbolt) ports. Also interesting, the WD PC SN740 SSD (up to 5.15 GB per second in reading) is available in an M.2 2230 variant that is only 30 mm long. A disk that could be useful to improve the storage of some laptops or tablets that use this kind of very short SSDs, such as Microsoft’s Surface Pro 8.

The WD Black SN850X SSD will come in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB versions (the 1TB version will retail for $190), while the P40 external drive will come in 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB versions, starting at $120.

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