Western Digital started shipping 20TB drives

[AndreiArgeanu]

Quote

Western Digital has announced that it has started shipping its 20TB Ultrastar DC HC650 SMR HDDs and 18TB Ultrastar DC HC550 CMR HDDs to select enterprise OEMs and hyperscale cloud customers worldwide, including Dropbox.

Sources: https://m.hexus.net/tech/news/storage/138155-western-digital-starts-sampling-20tb-smr-18tb-cmr-hdds/

 

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191220005512/en/Western-Digital-Sampling-World’s-20TB-SMR-18TB

 

Related to an older post made back in may 18th this year. 

 

[cj09beira]

very noice 

[jagdtigger]

Yeah, lets just hope it pushes down the price of the 10TB ones, those things are still crazy expensive....

[dizmo]

1 hour ago, jagdtigger said:

Yeah, lets just hope it pushes down the price of the 10TB ones, those things are still crazy expensive....

I think you missed the enterprise part price drops would be a looong way off. 

[2FA]

14 minutes ago, dizmo said:

I think you missed the enterprise part price drops would be a looong way off. 

Well, the price of 8 and 10TB WD externals went down when they released 12 and 14TB versions this year so it's happening, just slowly. I personally got a couple of 8TB drives for $110 each.

[dizmo]

9 minutes ago, 2FA said:

Well, the price of 8 and 10TB WD externals went down when they released 12 and 14TB versions this year so it's happening, just slowly. I personally got a couple of 8TB drives for $110 each.

The 12 and 14s were available through retail though, no?

[2FA]

36 minutes ago, dizmo said:

The 12 and 14s were available through retail though, no?

I'm not understanding this response. The highest capacity external being sold by WD was 10TB until the 12TB version was released a few months ago and the 14TB within the past month. Base price on the 8 and 10TB versions fell to their previously most common sale prices, with more recent sales pushing the minimum historical price lower. I'm not familiar with Red drives and their higher capacity release dates. Basing off the timeline though, I suspect that 16TB drives will be directly available to consumers in Q2 2020 as MAMR drives become more common.

[Founders]

That's 90 HDD's at 1.74 pounds each, that's 156.6 lbs of HDD's, or 71 kilos, or 11 stone.

That's what 1.8 petabytes looks like with 20 TB drives.

[dizmo]

2 hours ago, 2FA said:

I'm not understanding this response. The highest capacity external being sold by WD was 10TB until the 12TB version was released a few months ago and the 14TB within the past month. Base price on the 8 and 10TB versions fell to their previously most common sale prices, with more recent sales pushing the minimum historical price lower. I'm not familiar with Red drives and their higher capacity release dates. Basing off the timeline though, I suspect that 16TB drives will be directly available to consumers in Q2 2020 as MAMR drives become more common.

If 12 and 14TB drives were available to the retail market, yes, you'll see price drops.
However, since I don't believe the 18TB and 20TB drives will be available to your average consumer, we won't see price drops on the other drives, since there's nothing pushing the pricing down.

[2FA]

36 minutes ago, dizmo said:

If 12 and 14TB drives were available to the retail market, yes, you'll see price drops.
However, since I don't believe the 18TB and 20TB drives will be available to your average consumer, we won't see price drops on the other drives, since there's nothing pushing the pricing down.

I'm... I'm not disagreeing with you though...

[dizmo]

6 minutes ago, 2FA said:

I'm... I'm not disagreeing with you though...

Then what didn't you understand?

[2FA]

6 minutes ago, dizmo said:

Then what didn't you understand?

I was providing context to what sort of price drops we will see in the future when these types of drives reach consumers. Your question was an attempt to prove your point but I wasn't disagreeing with you, so your question didn't make sense.

[Bombastinator]

I’m kind of impressed they’re still half height drives.  I was expecting a bigger box.

[cj09beira]

i dont envy those that have to use them in server workloads, rebuilding a drive that big must take ages, we have no reason not to go to 2 heads (separate not like the one by seagate)

[Doobeedoo]

Also Seagate will have 20TB in 2020 no. But yeah, both enterprise first. I mean cool to see larger capacities, but yeah SSDs will always be more exciting to see with more storage and price decline. 

[Bombastinator]

*tries to imagine a home use for a 20 tb dive.  Fails*

[Kilrah]

My 16TB ones are getting "obsolete"... Well not so much since it'll be a year before an individual can buy those, and maybe 2 before they can at a reasonable price.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

28 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

...SSDs will always be more exciting to see with more storage and price decline. 

Especially more capacity, especially if they can cram it into a 2.5" 7mm or 9mm package.

22 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

*tries to imagine a home use for a 20 tb dive.  Fails*

While you may not imagine a home use for a 20TB drive, many home users can. Had a 20TB HDD been available when I decided to go all SSD, I could have one data HDD and four backup HDDs instead of the current five 4TB data SSDs and twenty 4TB backup SSDs. Data organization would also be a lot simpler.

 

6 minutes ago, Tony Tony Chopper said:

Wake me up when they have 40 tb drives.

And here I thought I was a data hoarder. I feel like an amateur now. 

[Doobeedoo]

7 minutes ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Especially more capacity, especially if they can cram it into a 2.5" 7mm or 9mm package.

True. I'm sure we'll get there. I mean there's a 3.5" 100TB SSD which is sick. And also a very large capacity in 2.5" form factor too. 

[Bombastinator]

12 minutes ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Especially more capacity, especially if they can cram it into a 2.5" 7mm or 9mm package.

While you may not imagine a home use for a 20TB drive, many home users can. Had a 20TB HDD been available when I decided to go all SSD, I could have one data HDD and four backup HDDs instead of the current five 4TB data SSDs and twenty 4TB backup SSDs. Data organization would also be a lot simpler.

 

And here I thought I was a data hoarder. I feel like an amateur now. 

Perhaps it’s because I don’t collect giant libraries of movies and digitize them.

[RejZoR]

Just imagine how much pr0n you can save on 20TB drive. Even in 4K!

[Bombastinator]

6 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Just imagine how much pr0n you can save on 20TB drive. Even in 4K!

Must I?

[RejZoR]

Just now, Bombastinator said:

Must I?

I mean, you can also imagine how many episodes of Teletubies they could create to fill it all up...

[Bombastinator]

Just now, RejZoR said:

I mean, you can also imagine how many episodes of Teletubies they could create to fill it all up...

Neither sounds appealing.

[Commodus]

Hard drives are the new tape backup drives... that is, the slow but cavernous option when you value space above all else.

 

It's to the point now where I couldn't imagine getting a computer without an SSD, and preferably with no spinning storage whatsoever!