Western Digital is prepping the release of the Ultrastar DC HS760 for data centers and server clients. Supposed to be the fastest HDD ever designed, it’ll integrate two actuators to enable simultaneous reads and writes, which is rare for magnetic storage. In comparison, storage devices using SATA are limited to a single queue with a depth of only 32 commands per queue. Ergo, only read or write transactions at a time.
Apart from simultaneous reads and writes, we’re looking at 2x the sequential transfer rates (vs. HC560) with 70% improved energy efficiency. The DC HS760 allows for sequential read/writes of 582MB/s, slightly higher than the 554MB/s offered by the Seagate Exos 2X18. The random I/O throughput is higher by a factor of 1.7x with a capacity of 20 TB.
The WD HS760 will feature six magnetic platters rotating at 7,200 RPM in a 3.5″ helium-filled shell. These disks will leverage ePMR and OptiNAND to squeeze in 2.2 TB of data per platter. It is backed by 512MB of cache memory, dubbed ArmorCache.
The Western Digital Ultrastar DC HS760 has a rated MTBF of 2.5 million hours for a 5-year warranty. It is currently available only in SAS format, but you can expect SATA variants later. Since this is a data center line, the price hasn’t been made public yet.
Source: WD
