Western Digital is building a 22TB HDD for 2022

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With the increase in demand in the digital field of science and technology, people’s demand for hard disk storage capacity is also increasing, and 20TB HDD has gradually begun to be used for civilian use around the world. Seagate is the first company in the world to launch a 20TB HDD, and Seagate also launched two new 20TB HDDs a few days ago.

Western Digital has also begun to take action. According to media reports, Western Digital is expected to launch a 22TB HDD in 2022. Previously, Western Digital CEO David Goeckeler said at the 5th Annual Virtual Wells Fargo TMT Summit Conference that technologies such as SMR, HAMR, and OptiNAND are all key technologies related to increasing the capacity of HDD.

Western Digital SN840 SSD

Image: Western Digital

Regarding HAMR (heat-assisted magnetic recording), the CEO said that Western Digital has invested a lot of money and manpower in it, and the technology will gradually mature in the future and officially debut. It also stated that HAMR is the key to further increasing the capacity of HDD. There are currently more than 400 patents on HAMR, but it also requires a lot of software design to support it, so it is still a few years away from commercialization.

Not only that, Western Digital even set a more ambitious goal-30TB HDD, CEO David Goeckeler said that Western Digital currently has SMR, OptiNAND, ePMR, and other technologies, which are the basic techniques to achieve the 30TB capacity goal.

It is worth mentioning that Western Digital also plans to launch a 22TB capacity HDD in 2022, a single disc of 2.2TB, a total of 10 discs. Up to now, Western Digital has launched a new 20TB HDD in September of this year, with a single disc size of 2.2TB, but it uses OptiNAND auxiliary data storage, and the sales status is also very hot, and it is currently sold out.

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