Western Digital began promoting an 18 TB variant of its WD Gold line of “enterprise class” SATA onerous drives (mannequin: WD181KRYZ). The WD Gold sequence tops the corporate’s SATA HDD lineup and its within the grey space between shopper and scalar enterprise segments, the place the corporate sells its HGST Ultrastar HDDs. WD Gold drives are nonetheless rated for 24×7 operation, and could be safely utilized in massive RAID arrays. The drives are confirmed to lack SMR and DM-SMR; and are confirmed to make use of CMR (typical magnetic recording), which ensures predictable write speeds and random-write efficiency. The WD Gold WD181KRYZ options 7,200 RPM spindle pace, HelioSeal know-how (the principle disk chamber is sealed and crammed with inert helium fuel), and a couple of.5 million-hour MTBF. Performance numbers and cache dimension for the 18 TB mannequin are unknown, however the 14 TB variant on this sequence provides as much as 267 MB/s sequential transfers, and contains a 512 MB DRAM write cache. The WD181KRYZ is listed on UK retailer SPAN for £520.
