WD Launches Dual-Actuator 20TB HDDs with SATA SSD-Like Throughput
WD Launches Dual-Actuator 20TB HDDs with SATA SSD-Like Throughput
Western Digital has introduced its first dual actuator hard disk drive (HDD), the Ultrastar DC HS760. It's a 20TB HDD drive that is designed to offer SATA SSD-like sequential read/write performance. The dual actuator Ultrastar DC HS760 20TB HDD builds upon the proven single-actuator Ultrastar DC HC560 drive, but doubles its sequential read/write speeds to the types of speeds that can be seen with SATA SSDs and also nearly doubles its random read/write performance. The key advantage of the new HDD for hyperscale cloud data centers is increased IOPS per terabyte.
Two independent actuators in the Ultrastar DC HS760 HDD drive work in parallel, offering up twice the sequential throughput (up to 582 MB/s), which is on par with a SATA SSD in throughput, and 1.7X higher random performance than a single-actuator HDD although it’s still not comparable to an SSD. WD also claims the Ultrastar DC HS760 HDD consumes up to 37% less power than two separate hard drives.
The Ultrastar DC HS760 20TB dual actuator HDD uses Western Digital’s third generation OptiNAND platform, featuring nine 2.2TB ePMR (energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording technology) platters and NAND flash cache to store metadata and write cache data to boost performance and increase areal density.
The Ultrastar DC HS760 HDD is accessed via single-port SAS and presents itself as two 10TB logical unit number (LUN) SAS devices. Since the logical HDDs are independently addressable, datacenters will have to introduce certain software tweaks. To that end, not all data centers can use the new drive. But for the added complexity on the software/configuration side of matters, data center operators are being promised higher performance levels.
Like other Western Digital Ultrastar drives, the DC HS760 20TB HDD has a five-year warranty and is intended to work in 24/7 environments. Each LUN is designed to handle up to 500TB per year that is slightly lower than the 550TB-per-year workload of typical data center HDD recovery.
The new Ultrastar DC HS760 HDDs offer higher capacities and increased performance, but they can also fail like any other storage media, leaving critical user data inaccessible. Then the owners of the Ultrastar DC HS760 HDDs will need to contact a reliable data recovery services provider like ACE Data Recovery to restore their irreplaceable data. ACE Data Recovery engineers can successfully recover data from external HDDs of all makes and models, including Western Digital and will gladly help the Ultrastar DC HS760 HDD owners with their data recovery needs.