While the end of the hard drive has been announced for years, Western Digital has not yet said its last word. One of the market leaders has just announced the arrival of a new HDD breaking all storage records, with 28 TB of available space. Of course, the latter will above all be for professionals, especially data centers.
With the crazy rise of SSDs in recent years, helped by falling prices, it is not uncommon to see the death of the good old hard drive announced. We ourselves, on several occasions, have spoken of the end of an era for computing, replaced by that of much faster and less imposing storage. But that’s without counting on the manufacturers who continue to innovate in the field.
After its imposing 26 TB hard drive launched last year, Western Digital is back in action by breaking a new record. Its next model will indeed offer no less than 28 TB of storage space, unheard of in the field. To do this, the company used its preferred manufacturing processes, Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) and Overlapping Magnetic Recording (SMR).
Related – Western Digital introduces the DC HS760, a dual-arm hard drive worthy of the best SSDs
Will the 28TB HDD be enough to save the hard drive?
However, one can wonder about the real technical progress of this hard drive. Indeed, it suffices to put its storage capacity into perspective with other figures to be somewhat disillusioned. Its rival Seagate, in particular, has already presented 32 TB hard drives which should arrive soon, obtained thanks to another manufacturing technique, the HAMR. The manufacturer plans to pass the 50 TB bar by 2025.
And here we are confined to the field of HDDs. Last year, the company Nimbus Data announced the launch of a monster 200TB SSD, enough to make Western Digital’s announcement slightly obsolete. Especially since all these storage solutions are primarily intended for professionals, the vast majority of data centers that have huge storage needs. The hard drive isn’t dead yet… but soon.
Source: Seeking Alpha