Western Digital (WD) has just introduced mechanical hard drives (HDDs) with storage capacities as large as 20 TB and even faster speeds than solid-state drives (SSDs).
According to Tech Unwrapped, the big problem between HDDs versus SSDs is that the moving parts limit performance, with transfer speeds typically in the 100MB/s range. However, WD had a great idea that was to increase the number of motors, moving arms, and heads. This simple solution of doubling the number of actuators allows for significant improvements in read and write speeds.
WD says the Ultrastar DC HS760 drive offers twice the sequential performance of the previous Ultrastar DC H560. In addition, they use OptiNAND technology that allows a large number of caches up to 512 MB to be integrated. This number is twice as high as the Seagate Exos X20, which only has a maximum cache of 256 MB.
WD currently has not provided specific data, but reports say this number falls between 500 – 600 MB/s, higher than the speed of 500 – 550 MB/s on current SATA SSDs. (whether 2.5 inches or M.2). Note that the specification of the SATA interface is 600 MB/s and this number cannot be exceeded for various technical reasons.
The price and release date of the Ultrastar DC HS760 HDD is currently unknown, only that data centers are their target.
It is known that HDD drives are gradually disappearing from the general market. Even modern laptops focus on using SSD drives, while newer gaming consoles have eliminated the hard drive. However, HDD still exists and has become a target for bulk data storage. This is because SSDs are starting to show their limitations, as SSDs larger than 4 TB are hard to find and the prices of large-capacity SSDs are not cheap. M.2 SSDs based on the PCIe 5.0 interface is also unavailable due to thermal problems generated in these drives.