cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/24650125

Because nothing says “fun” quite like having to restore a RAID that just saw 140TB fail.

Western Digital this week outlined its near-term and mid-term plans to increase hard drive capacities to around 60TB and beyond with optimizations that significantly increase HDD performance for the AI and cloud era. In addition, the company outlined its longer-term vision for hard disk drives’ evolution that includes a new laser technology for heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), new platters with higher areal density, and HDD assemblies with up to 14 platters. As a result, WD will be able to offer drives beyond 140 TB in the 2030s.

Western Digital plans to volume produce its inaugural commercial hard drives featuring HAMR technology next year, with capacities rising from 40TB (CMR) or 44TB (SMR) in late 2026, with production ramping in 2027. These drives will use the company’s proven 11-platter platform with high-density media as well as HAMR heads with edge-emitting lasers that heat iron-platinum alloy (FePt) on top of platters to its Curie temperature — the point at which its magnetic properties change — and reducing its magnetic coercivity before writing data.

  • DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    And how much will that cost? Sounds like something fantastic for my Jellyfin server. I’ll have all the 4k HDR I can get my hands on.

    • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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      24 hours ago

      I would not put 130TB on any one piece of hardware, because when it fails, it will be a very sad day.

      • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 hours ago

        That’s why this is perfect for a distributed array or as a data mass grave.
        You don’t really store anything in there that is needed often.

        Guess why (deep-)archive S3 is so much cheaper than hot S3 storage.
        That’s a reason why.

  • Ferroto@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    If you were to ask me a year ago I’d tell you that HDD’s would be the next dead storage medium but now SSD’s cost more then I spent on my rig and HDD’s are pushing 140 TB’s

    • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 hours ago

      I just looked up prices for servers we sell out work.
      They saw a price increase of 47%.
      The SSDs and RAM saw an increase of about 25% and ~150% respectively.
      Absolutely ludicrous and BS (ironically both the price and available stock increased. So it’s just preying on the market instead of an actual shortage lol)

  • FirmDistribution@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    with optimizations that significantly increase HDD performance for the AI and cloud era

    Can somebody do anything with a normal consumer in mind these days? 😭

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Not until somebody shuts off the investor money faucet for AI. Then they’ll come crawling back — although inevitably not until after they go whining to all the world’s governments about wanting a bailout.

      But hey, look at the bright side. We’ve already had the cryptocurrency mining boom and bust, and “AI” boom and soon to be bust. There’s still time for some idiot to invent the next tech scam fad which will conveniently require a shitload of hardware for no recognizably useful purpose.

      • AndrewZabar@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        ”although inevitably not until after they go whining to all the world’s governments about wanting a bailout”.

        Ahem… Whining? Wanting? Try instructing. They own the governments so they will just tell them to do it, and it will be done.

      • cecilkorik@piefed.ca
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        3 days ago

        Then they’ll come crawling back — although inevitably not until after they go whining to all the world’s governments about wanting a bailout.

        And don’t forget the part where, whether they get a bailout or not, they’ll still have to double the prices of everything to make up for all the money they lost on that stupid AI bubble exploding in their face (which all of us are somehow to blame for, obviously, which is why we have to pay them back for it)

    • mycodesucks@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      No, and it’s by design.

      You’re gonna lease a tablet and use cloud-based storage services and like it.

      The dystopia is here.

        • selokichtli@lemmy.ml
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          2 days ago

          Yeah, adding all the surveillance technology developed in the last 40 years, so you dont dare to take your eyes out of the display, for example.

  • Kyden Fumofly@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Whats the point when the prices for 4-8TB disks are stable the last 5 years? (I think that they are getting higher even…)

  • Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyzB
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    4 minutes ago

    Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

    Fewer Letters More Letters
    NAS Network-Attached Storage
    RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage
    SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage
    SSD Solid State Drive mass storage
    ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity

    5 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 16 acronyms.

    [Thread #72 for this comm, first seen 8th Feb 2026, 00:30] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

  • Shady_Shiroe@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I just hope smaller sized drives become cheaper. The word “hope” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

      • AndrewZabar@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I think ten years from now you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone even wasting their time on something so small.

          • AndrewZabar@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            Well, retro etc. but I wouldn’t consider this to be that. There’s no inherent value of a run-of-the-mill drive with merely lower storage capacity. And certainly not worth a premium.

            • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              it’s not antique yet. i still have my 5.25" diskettes with quest for glory 2 on them and they’re almost antique. i think the usb drive that reads them still works. give them another couple years.

              do HDDs work better than SSDs in space? because of the cosmic rays and shit? or something about intermittent power? no, really, this is a real problem that they could be already solving, one i know jack shit about.

              • AndrewZabar@lemmy.world
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                2 days ago

                So you want to be a hero!!! I only ever played the first one but fell in love with it.

                Erana’s Peace. hidengoseke. Meep’s Peep, my friend.

                • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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                  2 days ago

                  the second was the best in the series, but they all have their charm. i really need to buy the new game the coles made

      • SmoothLiquidation@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        When you are running a server just to store files (a NAS) you generally set it up so multiple physical hard disks are joined together into an array so if one fails, none of the data is lost. You can replace a failed drive by taking it out and putting in a new working drive and then the system has to copy all of the data over from the other drives. This process can take many hours to run even with the 10-20 TB drive you get today, so doing the same thing with 140 TB drive would take days.

        • wltr@discuss.tchncs.de
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          2 days ago

          Thanks! So, why does it matter? It’s a server, you can have it to do the job unattended. Or does it affect other services and you’re unable to use anything else before it finishes?