Western Digital, which is simply known as WD has just announced that it has begun mass production of the 24TB capacity HDD – WD Gold 24TB CMR HDD for enterprise use. But, we wonder what could this massive hard disk be used for?
Well, before you get too excited, this WD Gold 24TB CMR HDD are only meant for data centers. Data centers often need a lot of hard disks to store data. SSDs, while are great for accessing data quickly, there is still no match for hard disks when it comes down to dollars / TB. Prices of SSDs have come down a lot, but simply put a 24TB SSD would cost much more than a 24TB HDD.
With the advent of generative artificial intelligence and the applications it creates, demand for storage with large capacity, low power consumption, and high reliability is rapidly increasing. In response to this situation, the HDDs announced today to begin mass production were designed for customers who want to keep the total cost of ownership of their data centers as low as possible.
The 24TB capacity WD Gold 24TB CMR HDD has already started shipping, and the same capacity Ultrastar DC HC580 24TB CMR HDD is also scheduled to be available in the first quarter of 2024.
In addition, samples of the 28TB capacity Ultrastar DC HC680 28TB SMR HDD have been shipped since August 2023, and this is also scheduled to be available in the first quarter of 2024.