Western Digital’s subsidiary HGST has unveiled the first 10- terabyte hard drive, a data center-class device aimed at businesses seeking cloud and archive storage space.
Just how big is 10TB? When Twitter delivered its first batch of 21 billion archived tweets to the Library of Congress, the files took up 20TB of space.
Hard drives that tout similar storage space are created by combining storage disks into one external hard drive. HGST’s drive marks the first singular device with 10TB of storage space.
HGST’s immense capacity is due in part to helium, which fills the sealed drive and reportedly reduces heat and friction caused by spinning storage disks. The HGST drive also relies on “shingled magnetic recording” to increase data density while saving space.
The 10TB drive is one of several recently announced HGST products meant to help businesses “manage the increasing volume, velocity, variety and longevity of data in today’s rapidly evolving data center,” the San Jose-based company said in a statement.
HGST is making sample versions of the new drive and shipping them to select customers. No price has been announced.
The company revealed its 10TB drive just weeks after Western Digital competitor Seagate started shipping the first-ever 8TB drive.
The new HelioSeal technology by HGST might help Irvine-based Western Digital eat into Seagate’s slim lead on enterprise storage market share, said Fang Zhang, a senior analyst at market research company IHS.
“Western Digital is still behind Seagate, but with HGST, they’re very close,” Zhang said.
Western Digital bought HGST (formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technologies) in 2012 for $3.9 billion in cash and stock valued at about $0.9 billion. It’s one of several acquisitions the company has made in recent years as it expands beyond the PC market.
Western Digital’s stock was up 0.17 percent Thursday, closing at $100.06.
Contact the writer: musheroff@ocregister.com
