Western Digital has begun rolling out its massive 14TB Ultrastar spinning-disk hard drives to a limited number of qualified customers, with general release expected later this year. The implications for data centers and other high-volume facilities are significant, as it looks to deliver maximum value in terms of price and power consumption per terabyte of space. The drive is also manufactured for durability: it is rated for 2.5M-hours mean time between failures (MTBF) and ships with a 5-year warranty.
The 14TB Ultrastar comes with both SATA and SAS connectivity and sports two-dimensional magnetic recording read heads to ensure consistent performance. Due to the high density of data across the platters, the Ultrastar offers 267 MB/s transfer speeds, an improvement over its previous generation of drives.
WD’s new release marks further improvement in HDD capacity, a welcome sight in an age of rapidly-expanding data storage needs. There is no pricing information currently available for this product’s general release.
For full technical information on the new drive, check out WD’s product page and Anandtech’s in-depth review from earlier this year. If you have any questions about whether the 14TB Ultrastar could be implemented at your facility, contact Nodal!