According to the latest report, the CEO of Western Digital delivered a speech at a meeting and mentioned some future plans and long-term goals. At the annual Wells Fargo TMT Summit, Western Digital CEO David Goeckeler said that technologies such as OptiNAND, SMR, and HAMR are crucial to the increase in the storage capacity of mechanical hard drives.
Seagate is the world’s first manufacturer to launch a 20TB mechanical hard drive, which has been shipped at the end of 2020 and recently launched a civilian version. Western Digital released a 20TB mechanical hard drive in September 2021, with a single 2.2TB disk, using OptiNAND for auxiliary data storage. The products are currently sold out.
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David Goeckeler said that Western Digital has invested a lot of money in HAMR (Heat Assisted Recording) technology, which is about to mature and will be officially unveiled in the future. HAMR technology can further increase capacity and further maintain the competitiveness of mechanical hard disk products in the future, but this technology also requires a large amount of software design to support it, and it is not expected to be commercialized in the next few years.
Moreover, both Western Digital and Seagate have set a goal of manufacturing 30TB mechanical hard drives. In addition, Seagate also plans to achieve the goal of 100TB per disk in 2030. Goeckeler said that Western Digital already has ePMR (energy-assisted storage technology), SMR, and OptiNAND technologies, and can achieve the goal of 30TB per disk around 2025.
In addition, he also said that SMR shingled magnetic technology will become more and more practical, and customers will gradually understand it. Western Digital will also launch a 22TB capacity mechanical hard drive in 2022, a 2.2TB single platter, with a total of 10 platters, to further increase the storage density.
