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WD-Feature

Every time you buy a hard drive, you probably think it's plenty of space. Why would you always need more? Inevitably, you finish upwardly in the ruby-red once more a year or 2 later on. Files just continue getting bigger with all these 4K videos and cameras with a zillion megapixels. Western Digital has come through on its promise belatedly last year to release a 12TB hard drive. Information technology's headed to retailers now, but better set yourself for sticker daze.

The new bulldoze is being released nether Western Digital's HGST brand, which is more business-oriented than the mainline WD brand. It's known every bit the HGST Ultrastar He12, i of the visitor's helium-filled drives. The last bulldoze in this serial had a chapters of 10TB, and another is already on the road map that has 14TB of storage. This measly 12TB version has eight platters with an boilerplate data density of 864Gbits/square inch. It spins at 7200RPM, and comes in both SATA and SAS (used generally in servers) versions. Over again, HGST focuses on business products, and SAS has a data transfer speed of 12Gbps, double that of SATA3.

The increase in spinning drive chapters was starting time to taper off a few years back, but then WD started filling them with helium. That sounds similar a marketing gimmick, but information technology makes a large difference when you take all these tightly packed moving parts to fence with. Co-ordinate to Western Digital, the lower density of helium (i-seventh that of air) reduces friction and vibration. That makes a high-density, eight-platter design possible. Technically, helium could be used to spin fewer platters at higher speeds, but information technology's unlikely such drives would be competitive with SSDs.

The 12TB HGST Ultrastar He12 includes support for Instant Secure Erase (ISE) and Cocky-Encrypting Drive (SED), and it comes with a five-twelvemonth warranty. The company says the annual failure rate is merely 0.35 percent, and so information technology's unlikely you'd have to take advantage of the warranty at all.

WD is no longer the only company doing helium drives — Seagate has released several helium-filled HDDs, including its ain newly appear 12TB model. There'southward no transport date for this drive, just information technology'll probably be out in a few months. Non that Western Digital is especially forthcoming, either. While it confirms the new 12TB drives are heading out to distributors, in that location'due south no pricing information. The current 10TB drives retail for near $500, so await something marginally higher for the new drive. They should soon pop up at retailers similar Newegg and Amazon.