OptiNAND

Western Digital is announcing today that it has begun volume shipments of its 24 TB hard drives based on conventional magnetic recording (CMR) to its full customer base. In addition, the company started to ramp up production of its 28 TB HDDs featuring shingled magnetic recording (SMR) that will be used by select customers. The new lineup of 3.5-inch 7200 RPM hard drives includes Western Digital's Ultrastar DC HC580 24 TB and WD Gold 24 TB HDDs, which are based on the company's energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording (ePMR) technology. Both of these drives are further enhanced with OptiNAND to improve performance by storing repeatable runout (RRO) metadata on NAND memory (instead of on disks) and improve reliability. The company is also preparing their Ultrastar DC HC680...