Largest Hard Drive in the world – Western Digital 26TB HDD

HDD can be slow but the capacity remains the key specification when buying one, and the research and development on hard drives have come a long way today we are getting to see the largest hard drive in the world in 2022.

HDD took everything by storm when the first terabyte hard disk came out in 2007 and since then the whole market has changed in the 15 years. Western Digital is coming out with an all-new 26 TB hard disk in 2022 and that has taken a lot of experiments and research and development to make. This kind of hard disk help servers, content creators, and large businesses. One terabyte (TB) is equal to one trillion bytes and one petabyte (PB) is equal to one thousand terabytes.

Top-of-the-line for Western Digital’s enterprise hard drives is the 26TB Ultrastar DC HC670. If you remember a few years ago, hard drives that were scarcely half that size were the largest you could get, but the massive capacity comes with a tradeoff. WD had to use the shingled magnetic recording (SMR) to squeeze more capacity onto the platters. SMR allows for higher areal density, but that comes at the expense of speed.

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Western Digital has confirmed its upcoming 22TB Ultrastar DC HC570 and 26TB Ultrastar DC HC670 UltraSMR HDDs, the first of their kind. HDDs may not be as speedy as the SSDs of today, but the capacity is still an important aspect when buying large capacity. And with WD spearheading the movement, those numbers are now reaching unprecedented heights. Within a decade we’re likely to be seeing 30TB, even 40TB capacities hitting servers. 

The new 26TB drives will appeal mainly to business customers, which is why they’ll only be available under the Ultrastar series. For the company’s more prosumer lines, WD has a new 22TB drive. Dropping those extra 4 terabytes allowed Western Digital to use the conventional magnetic recording (CMR) for high-ish capacity and speedier performance. These drives will appear as Ultrastar, WD Red Pro (NAS), WD Purple (surveillance), and WD Gold (server) products.

Largest Hard Drive in 2022 – 22TB HC570 and 26TB HC670 HDD Availability

  • The 22TB Ultrastar DC HC570 HDD and the new 26TB Ultrastar DC HC670 UltraSMR HDD are now sampling to select hyper-scale customers. The DC HC570 HDD will begin volume shipments to the channel, and the UltraSMR HDD will begin shipping to select customers in the summer of 2022.
  • The Ultrastar Data60and Data102JBODs will feature the new 22TB CMR Ultrastar HDDs this summer, delivering the industry’s highest storage density in a fully optimized platform for added durability and data reliability for software-defined storage.
  • Extending OptiNAND innovations across its HDD portfolio, Western Digital will deliver 22TB WD Purple Pro HDDs for smart video/surveillance, WD Red Pro HDDs for NAS solutions, and WD Gold HDDs for system integrators and resellers serving enterprises and SMBs. These drives will be available this summer.

So this was all about the largest hard drive in 2022. WD’s addition to high capacity Hard Drives pave the way for modern server machines that you can build at your home for storing data and most importantly your favorite games!

That’s all folks!


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