Every time we imagine an upper limit for traditional hard drives, Seagate and Western Digital appear to indicate the exact opposite. This time it's WD who announced its fourth generation of drives aimed at the enterprise market. The new helium-based Ultrastar He12 series will have two representatives, one with 12 terabytes debuting in the early months of 2017, and another with 14 terabytes that will follow shortly after.
Solid-state drives are reaching capacities that definitely leave conventional hard drives spinning like a top, however, they are still far from the shelves, and their price is prohibitive for the average user. For that reason, large data centers prefer mechanical solutions until the cost-benefit-stability relationship reaches the ideal balance. Improvements of 10 or 20 percent on space may not be so surprising in individual cases, but once larger scales are involved, we're talking about a much more tangible benefit.
So we come to the recent announcement by Western Digital that reveals two new products: the Ultrastar He12 12 and 14 terabyte drives. For this generation, Western Digital (through its HGST division) implemented a new platform that enables the use of eight platters, one more than the previous HelioSeal series. The simple act of placing eight platters in a 3.5-inch format is impressive, but Western Digital had to face new engineering challenges, redesigning the interior of its units. The published specifications indicate versions with SATA and SAS interfaces at 7,200 revolutions per minute, 256 megabytes of cache, and running power consumption ranging between 7.2 and 9.8 watts.
Not much information is available yet about the 14 terabyte drive, but what we do know is that it will reach the market in mid-2017. Another thing that hasn't come to light is the price, however, I imagine big companies won't think twice. Going from 10 to 12 terabytes per drive means a standard server rack jumps from 2,400 to 2,880 terabytes without major difficulties, and there are configurations that could take that number to 5,400 terabytes.
