Yesterday, January 30, Western Digital quite unexpectedly introduced its first HDD hard drives based on Dual-Actuator technology. It is worth noting that some time ago, a competitor represented by Seagate introduced a line of Exos drives built on a similar technology. And the main advantage of the new Ultrastar DC HS760 drive with an impressive capacity of 20 TB is that thanks to the dual drive, the manufacturer has managed to double the sequential write and read speeds. As a result, the new product boasts characteristics that are typical for solid-state drives running on the SATA3 interface. That is, already now WD has an HDD that is as fast as entry-level SSDs.
In order to achieve such an impressive read and write speed for an HDD, the company’s engineers had to implement two independent drives that work in parallel, ultimately providing twice the throughput up to 582 MB / s – some SSDs are even slower than this HDD. True, we are talking exclusively about drives operating via the SATA interface, because drives with a PCIe interface have a read and write speed that is about three times higher (in the case of available models). But since this drive was not created for home use, the manufacturer did not stop only at information transfer rates.
WD employees believe that the Ultrastar DC HS760 will be most in demand within data centers and cloud storage, so the company’s engineers have placed particular emphasis on low power consumption – the model consumes 37% less energy than two separate hard drives. Probably, if someone still decides to use such a drive at home, then such savings will not play a special role, but in the conditions of server centers, where there are hundreds and thousands of such drives, reducing energy costs is an extremely important bonus. In addition, the manufacturer noted that the Ultrastar DC HS760 boasts a significant increase in IOPS resource per terabyte of data.
Unfortunately, Western Digital is not yet ready to reveal the price of their latest dual drive technology hard drives, but they will certainly be more expensive than similar drives with a single drive. Moreover, drives intended for data centers are not usually sold at retail, so their final price will depend heavily on bulk purchases as well.
Source: Trash Box
I’m Meagan Diaz, a news writer and author at World Stock Market. My main focus is on technology and stock market trends, and I’m passionate about helping readers stay informed on the ever-changing landscape. I bring extensive knowledge of the industry to my work as well as a knack for storytelling that makes my articles both accessible and engaging.
