UltraStar He10 | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net KitGuru.net - Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards Wed, 10 Jun 2015 01:06:41 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://www.kitguru.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/cropped-KITGURU-Light-Background-SQUARE2-32x32.png UltraStar He10 | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net 32 32 HGST formally introduces its 10TB hard disk drive https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/hgst-formally-introduces-its-10tb-hard-disk-drive/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/hgst-formally-introduces-its-10tb-hard-disk-drive/#comments Tue, 09 Jun 2015 19:15:10 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=253607 HGST, a maker of hard disk drives that belongs to Western Digital, on Tuesday formally introduced the world’s first hard disk drive with 10TB capacity. The HDD was developed for active archive applications and is not designed to offer leading-edge performance. Moreover, to use it, owners of datacenters will need to optimize their software. The …

The post HGST formally introduces its 10TB hard disk drive first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
HGST, a maker of hard disk drives that belongs to Western Digital, on Tuesday formally introduced the world’s first hard disk drive with 10TB capacity. The HDD was developed for active archive applications and is not designed to offer leading-edge performance. Moreover, to use it, owners of datacenters will need to optimize their software.

The HGST Ultrastar Archive Ha10 comes in 3.5” form-factor, is based on seven shingled magnetic recording (SMR) platters and is filled with helium. The new drive features Serial ATA-6Gb/s or SAS-6Gb/s interface as well as 7200rpm spindle speed. According to HGST, the Ultrastar Archive Ha10 has sustained read transfer rate of 157MB/s and sustained write transfer rate of 68MB/s. Average seek time of the drive is about 8.5ms. The Ultrastar Archive Ha10 is the third of HGST’s helium-based HDDs launched in less than two years.

“HGST’s helium-filled drives boasts industry-leading storage density, low power consumption and proven reliability with 2.5M hours MTBF,” said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing of HGST. “By layering SMR on top of helium, we are enabling massively-scalable, TCO-driven storage solutions with the performance and durability necessary for the long term retention of archived data. Making SMR design investments today minimizes incremental efforts for future SMR solutions, and gives our customers a time-to-market advantage for all current and future high capacity HDDs in the market.”

hgst_10tb_hdd

HGST’s 10TB hard disk drives are designed for cloud datacenters that require maximum amount of storage. Since applications based on the new Ultrastar Archive Ha10 maximize storage density per cubic meter, the new hard drives will be popular among companies like Amazon Web Services and similar.

In fact, HGST warns that the Ultrastar Archive Ha10 is not a drop-in replacement for traditional capacity enterprise drives. To truly take advantage of the HDD, custom active archive applications with sequential write workloads are required. Since the drives use SMR platters, owners of datacenters will need to optimize their software for the HDD. Initial rollout of the 10TB hard drive is focused on cloud and OEM storage customers who have the in-house capability to develop the software required. As a result, at first such drives will be available at a request and will not be sold in retail.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: Without any doubts, 10TB hard disk drive is a breakthrough. However, to truly take advantage of increased capacities, datacentre owners will have to optimize their software since HDDs based on SMR technology are considerably slower than hard drives featuring PMR platters.

The post HGST formally introduces its 10TB hard disk drive first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/hgst-formally-introduces-its-10tb-hard-disk-drive/feed/ 1
HGST starts to sample 10TB HDDs, expects helium-filled drives to thrive https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/hgst-starts-to-sample-10tb-hdds-claims-50-of-enterprise-hdds-will-be-helium-filled-by-2017/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/hgst-starts-to-sample-10tb-hdds-claims-50-of-enterprise-hdds-will-be-helium-filled-by-2017/#respond Tue, 24 Mar 2015 10:44:57 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=241571 HGST, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Western Digital Corp., on Tuesday said that its Ultrastar HelioSeal hard disk drives are now field-proven and rated for two and a half million hours mean time between failure (MTBF). In addition, the company said that it had begun to sample its 10TB hard drives with select customers and that …

The post HGST starts to sample 10TB HDDs, expects helium-filled drives to thrive first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
HGST, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Western Digital Corp., on Tuesday said that its Ultrastar HelioSeal hard disk drives are now field-proven and rated for two and a half million hours mean time between failure (MTBF). In addition, the company said that it had begun to sample its 10TB hard drives with select customers and that 50 per cent of its enterprise-class HDDs will be filled with helium by 2017.

While helium-filled hard disk drives are harder to produce than traditional HDDs, because helium’s density is seven times lower than that of air, it is possible to install more platters inside such drives and also reduce power consumption of motors. This allows to retain 7200rpm spindle speed on high-capacity hard drives. The manufacturer claims that the helium inside the drives also reduces disk vibration and flutter, which further improves reliability. Finally, since Ultrastar HelioSeal are hermetically sealed, air, humidity and other contaminates are kept out of the drive.

“Based on the patented HelioSeal technology, HGST’s Ultrastar Helium-filled drives are the only drives that improve data center TCO on virtually every level—from storage density, power and cooling costs, to reliability, capacity and more. We also believe it is the only way to get to higher densities therefore higher capacities while maintaining reliability. All of these factors contribute to defining the true TCO of the data center,” said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing, HGST.

wd_hgst_ultrastar_helium_10tb

The company said that so far it has sold about one million Ultrastar HelioSeal HDDs, which is not a lot. Nonetheless, the company believes that in the coming years helium-filled hard drives will account for 50 per cent of its enterprise-class HDDs.

HGST is shipping its 6TB Ultrastar He6 and 8TB Ultrastar He8 helium-filled drives commercially today. HGST’s 10TB Helium HDDs with SMR are sampling with select customers.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: Without any doubts, helium-filled hard disk drives are great for datacentres, where every additional terabyte matters. However, it does not look like such HDDs will ever be offered for consumers as they are still pretty expensive to make.

The post HGST starts to sample 10TB HDDs, expects helium-filled drives to thrive first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/hgst-starts-to-sample-10tb-hdds-claims-50-of-enterprise-hdds-will-be-helium-filled-by-2017/feed/ 0
HGST’s 10TB HDD pictured, set to hit the market in Q2 2015 https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/hgsts-10tb-hdd-pictured-set-to-hit-the-market-in-q2-2015/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/hgsts-10tb-hdd-pictured-set-to-hit-the-market-in-q2-2015/#comments Sat, 14 Mar 2015 01:13:33 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=239990 HGST, a subsidiary of Western Digital Corp., has demonstrated its highly-anticipated 10TB hard disk drive at the Linux Foundation Vault trade-show in Boston, Massachusetts. The new drive is already in mass production and will be released commercially shortly. ZDNet has managed to picture the prototype of the 10TB SMR HelioSeal hard disk drive, the industry’s …

The post HGST’s 10TB HDD pictured, set to hit the market in Q2 2015 first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
HGST, a subsidiary of Western Digital Corp., has demonstrated its highly-anticipated 10TB hard disk drive at the Linux Foundation Vault trade-show in Boston, Massachusetts. The new drive is already in mass production and will be released commercially shortly.

ZDNet has managed to picture the prototype of the 10TB SMR HelioSeal hard disk drive, the industry’s first HDD that can store such incredible amount of data. The hard drive features a massive sticker and is clearly not a commercial version of the product, but it proves (assuming that HGST just did not put a sticker on another drive) that 10TB HDDs exist. It is unknown whether HGST demonstrated the hard disk drive in action or not during the trade-show.

wd_hgst_10tb_hdd_helio_seal_zdnet

The HGST 10TB UltraStar HelioSeal hard drive is based on seven 1.43TB SMR [shingled magnetic recording] platters and is filed with helium. Nothing else, including spindle speed, cache size, interfaces, performance figures, etc. is known about the novelty.

The ultra-large capacity HGST HelioSeal HDDs are designed for cool-to-cold storage applications. The main goals of cold data storage applications is to store maximum amount of data per cubic meter of a datacentre while consuming the lowest amount of energy. Typical 42U capacity-optimized storage cluster can hold 360 3.5” hard disk drives. With 10TB drives, capacity of 42U rack will total 3600TB of data.

If HGST releases its 10TB HDDs in the second quarter, then its customers will start deploying such drives sometimes in late Q3 2015. Since the 10TB UltraStar HelioSeal hard drive provides a number of advantages over competing solutions, it is likely that such HDDs will become rather popular among those, who need to store vast amounts of cold data. HGST believes that this year its HelioSeal hard drives will finally be adopted widely.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: Looks like HGST is on the finish line with its 10TB HDDs for datacentres. I wonder how long it will take hard drive makers to create 10TB drives for consumers.

The post HGST’s 10TB HDD pictured, set to hit the market in Q2 2015 first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/hgsts-10tb-hdd-pictured-set-to-hit-the-market-in-q2-2015/feed/ 1
WD, HGST expect helium-filled HDDs to get more popular this year https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/western-digital-hgst-expect-helium-filled-hdds-to-get-more-popular-this-year/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/western-digital-hgst-expect-helium-filled-hdds-to-get-more-popular-this-year/#respond Tue, 17 Feb 2015 21:06:08 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=236165 HGST, a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Digital, first announced its helium-filled hard disk drives in 2013 and started their shipments in 2014. Such drives have a number of advantages compared to traditional HDDs, but they still have not gained popularity because both WD and Seagate produce hard drives with comparable capacity that are not …

The post WD, HGST expect helium-filled HDDs to get more popular this year first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
HGST, a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Digital, first announced its helium-filled hard disk drives in 2013 and started their shipments in 2014. Such drives have a number of advantages compared to traditional HDDs, but they still have not gained popularity because both WD and Seagate produce hard drives with comparable capacity that are not sealed. However, this year a lot may change.

At present HGST offers Ultrastar He hard drives with 6TB and 8TB capacities for applications that require maximum storage density and relatively high performance. Such HDDs compete with HGST’s Ultrastar 6TB hard drives, WD’s Ae 6.3TB HDDs as well as Seagate’s Enterprise Capacity, Enterprise NAS and Archive hard disk products with 5TB – 8TB capacities. While the Ultrastar He products have some advantages compared to rival products, they are still not radically better than competitors, which is a reason of their relatively low popularity.

In the coming months HGST plans to release 10TB UltraStar HelioSeal hard drive that will offer a massive capacity advantage over all existing solutions. The drive is based on seven 1.43TB SMR [shingled magnetic recording] platters and is filed with helium. While Seagate also plans to introduce its 10TB HDD this year (based on six 1.66TB SMR platters), the company will likely do that only in late 2015, which means that the Ultrastar He 10TB will have a significant time-to-market advantage. The release of the 10TB helium-filled drive as well as the ramp of 8TB product will help the drives to gain market share because so far the adoption of such HDDs has been slow.

wd_hgst_ultrastar_helium_10tb

“Helium, as an individual category, particularly as it relates to 6TB drive, probably did not have a material impact [on our business],” said Steve Milligan, chief executive officer and president of Western Digital, during a recent conference call with investors and financial analysts. “We believe that as we transition to the 8TB platform with the helium product, we will begin to see a bit of a larger impact.”

Mike Cordano, the president of HGST, also believes that the use of helium-filled hard drives will increase this year. In an interview with DigiTimes he predicted “a large increase in the use of helium-filled hard disk drives” in data centers in 2015.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: The HGST HelioSeal platform will have to offer a clear and consistent advantage in terms of capacity over competing HDDs from all manufacturers to stay relevant. It remains to be seen how the HelioSeal platform will work with heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) and other upcoming HDD technologies. To keep its HelioSeal ahead of competitors, HGST will have to combine it with all the latest recording methods, which is not an easy thing to do.

The post WD, HGST expect helium-filled HDDs to get more popular this year first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/western-digital-hgst-expect-helium-filled-hdds-to-get-more-popular-this-year/feed/ 0
HGST: Mass production of 10TB HDDs to start in Q1 2015 https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/hgst-mass-production-of-10tb-hdds-to-start-in-q1-2015/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/hgst-mass-production-of-10tb-hdds-to-start-in-q1-2015/#comments Thu, 25 Sep 2014 22:59:28 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=213604 Although HGST, a subsidiary of Western Digital Corp., introduced its 10TB hard disk drive earlier this month, the company has never revealed when it plans to release the product commercially. This week a representative for HGST finally said that the company will start mass production of behemoth HDD in early 2015. Vincent Chen, the general manager …

The post HGST: Mass production of 10TB HDDs to start in Q1 2015 first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
Although HGST, a subsidiary of Western Digital Corp., introduced its 10TB hard disk drive earlier this month, the company has never revealed when it plans to release the product commercially. This week a representative for HGST finally said that the company will start mass production of behemoth HDD in early 2015.

Vincent Chen, the general manager of HGST Taiwan and Shanghai revealed at a press conference on Thursday that mass production of HGST’s rather unique 10TB hard drive is set to start in the first quarter of 2015, reports DigiTimes web-site. Commercial shipments of such HDDs will likely start in Q1 2015 or Q2 2015, depending on when exactly mass production begins.

HGST’s Ultrastar 10TB SMR HelioSeal hard disk drive combines a number of leading-edge technologies. The drive is based on seven 1.43TB SMR [shingled magnetic recording] platters and is filed with helium. Nothing more, including spindle speed, performance figures, etc. is known about the novelty.

wd_hgst_ultrastar_helium_10tb

The 10TB HDD is designed for cool-to-cold storage applications. The main goals of cold data storage applications is to store maximum amount of data per cubic meter of a datacentre while consuming the lowest amount of energy. In many cases performance of cold storage applications does not matter a lot since most of the data hosted by such devices is never accessed.

Typical 42U capacity-optimized storage cluster can hold 360 3.5” hard disk drives. With 4TB drives such cluster can store up to 1440TB of data. With 10TB drives, its capacity will total 3600TB of data.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: It will be interesting to see what Seagate Technology will offer by Q1 2015. While the company has not announced any plans regarding sealed HDDs, it still could use SMR platters for hard drives designed for cold-storage applications.

The post HGST: Mass production of 10TB HDDs to start in Q1 2015 first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/hgst-mass-production-of-10tb-hdds-to-start-in-q1-2015/feed/ 2
WD’s HGST introduces new 6TB, 8TB and 10TB hard disk drives https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/wds-hgst-introduces-new-6tb-8tb-and-10tb-hard-disk-drives/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/wds-hgst-introduces-new-6tb-8tb-and-10tb-hard-disk-drives/#comments Wed, 10 Sep 2014 17:17:28 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=211189 HGST, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Western Digital Corp., has introduced three new Ultrastar-series hard disk drives with 6TB, 8TB and 10TB capacity designed for data centre storage infrastructure. The new HDDs utilize WD’s latest technologies – including HelioSeal, new platters featuring perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology as well as all-new platters with shingled magnetic recording …

The post WD’s HGST introduces new 6TB, 8TB and 10TB hard disk drives first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
HGST, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Western Digital Corp., has introduced three new Ultrastar-series hard disk drives with 6TB, 8TB and 10TB capacity designed for data centre storage infrastructure. The new HDDs utilize WD’s latest technologies – including HelioSeal, new platters featuring perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology as well as all-new platters with shingled magnetic recording (SMR) tech.

All three new Ultrastar drives are designed for cloud datacentres and for cold storage applications (archives). All three are based on the enterprise-class platforms and therefore are optimized for maximum possible reliability depending on actual usage scenario. The key feature of the drives is to store maximum amounts of data while consuming limited amounts of energy and using limited amount of space.

wd_hgst_ultrastar_helium_10tb

General specifications of the new Ultrastar HDDs look as follows:

  • Ultrastar 7K6000 6TB: 3.5” HDD with 7200rpm spindle speed, 128MB DRAM buffer, Serial ATA-6Gb/s or SAS-12Gb/s interface. The drive is based on five 1.2TB PMR platters and is not filed with helium. HGST declares 227MB/s maximum sustained transfer rate for 6TB models and 4.16ms typical latency.
  • Ultrastar He8 8TB: 3.5” HDD with 7200rpm spindle speed, 128MB DRAM buffer, Serial ATA-6Gb/s or SAS-12Gb/s interface. The drive is based on seven 1.2TB PMR platters and is filed with helium in order to shrink the distance between platters without increasing risks and sacrificing performance. HGST declares 205MB/s maximum sustained transfer rate and 4.16ms typical latency.
  • Ultrastar 10TB SMR HelioSeal HDD: 3.5” HDD with unknown spindle speed and interfaces (SAS, SATA expected). The drive is based on seven 1.43TB SMR platters and is filed with helium. Actual performance of the drive was not revealed, but do not expect it to be truly high since SMR platters cannot enable leading-edge performance. Keeping in mind that the HDD is designed for mostly for cold storage, its performance is not as important as its capacity. HGST/WD is currently sampling 10TB SMR HelioSeal HDD. Commercial shipments are not expected to start before calendar 2015.

In addition to announcing its new HDDs, HGST said that while its air-based HDD high-capacity platforms have served the industry for decades, to better serve the evolving data centre’s capacity and efficiency needs, all future HGST enterprise capacity HDDs will be built on the HelioSeal platform and will thus be filed with helium. Expect the future 3.5” enterprise capacity HDDs from HGST to feature six or seven platters as well as very high capacities.

hgst_wd_helium_hdd

“By providing complete solutions for both performance and capacity centric environments, we’re enabling our data center customers and partners to focus on developing new services and capabilities that drive competitive differentiation and profitability for their businesses,” said Mike Cordano, president of HGST.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: It is really interesting to note that HGST plans to stop development of capacity-optimized enterprise-class hard disk drives. It is unclear whether Western Digital itself will do the same and will borrow the HelioSeal technology from HGST, or will continue with air-filed HDDs. If WD adopts the sealed-HDD technology, then we can talk about a new industry trend towards gas-filed capacity-optimized HDDs, which means that eventually the technology could be used for capacity-optimized consumer drives too. If not, it will mean that WD and HGST will simply offer their products to different kinds of customers. The latter will address clients with demands for maximum storage density, while the former will concentrate on those, who need certain other things.

The post WD’s HGST introduces new 6TB, 8TB and 10TB hard disk drives first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/wds-hgst-introduces-new-6tb-8tb-and-10tb-hard-disk-drives/feed/ 7