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submitted 3 months ago by veeesix@lemmy.ca to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

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.

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[-] FirmDistribution@lemmy.world 32 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months 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 19 points 3 months 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.

[-] cecilkorik@piefed.ca 4 points 3 months 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 8 points 3 months 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.

[-] myserverisdown@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago

140 TB is a whole heck of a lot of movies and TV shows

[-] Kushan@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

It's about the storage I have in my server right now - using 15 drives ☠️

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[-] rumba@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 months ago

Normal consumers can install jellyfin. At some point they'll make downloading a crime, they wouldn't hurt people to have a decent collection of stuff ready for that day.

[-] Shady_Shiroe@lemmy.world 16 points 3 months ago

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

[-] Supervisor194@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Ten years from now...

Amazon search: "hard drive"

Result: 4TB $198

[-] Zozano@aussie.zone 5 points 3 months ago
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Holy fuck can you imagine how long it would take to re-stripe a failed drive in a z2 array 😭

[-] Telorand@reddthat.com 3 points 3 months ago
[-] SmoothLiquidation@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months 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.

[-] Andres4NY@social.ridetrans.it 7 points 3 months ago

@SmoothLiquidation @Telorand They also claim up to 8x speed improvements with HAMR. Obviously that remains to be seen, but if they could roughly match capacity improvements, that would keep restriping in the same ballpark.

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[-] thatradomguy@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago

Probably still with only 1 year warranty...

[-] Grapho@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 months ago

And if it breaks at 10 months and they take another 2 to send your replacement back, well, they no longer need to send one that actually works this time either

[-] Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months 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 12 acronyms.

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

[-] MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 5 points 3 months ago

Okay cool, cool, so does this mean ridiculous data centers will use these things, and then can I get another 4TB RED for my NAS so I can fit my whole life on a mirrored total of 8TB without paying 8x what it's worth, please?

Thaaaaanks...

[-] AndrewZabar@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

8TB? That’s my ideal RAM configuration lol. ;-)

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[-] zorflieg@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

I wonder why current consumer HDD's don't have NVME connectors on them. Like I know speeding up the bus isn't going to make the spinning rust access faster but the cache ram would probably benefit from not being capped at 550MBps

[-] DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months 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.

[-] Agent641@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago

If you have to ask, you can't afford it 😭

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[-] Ferroto@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months 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

[-] iturnedintoanewt@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

Doesn't this sound awfully similar to the Mini disc technology? The discs were only writable when heated by a laser. They were pretty impressive for the time... But not very fast. Especially when writing.

[-] billwashere@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

This would be a bitch to have to rebuild in a raid array. At some point a drive can get TOO big. And this is looking to cross that line.

[-] irmadlad@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

At some point a drive can get TOO big

I was thinking the same. I would hate to toast a 140 TB drive. I think I'd just sit right down and cry. I'll stick with my 10 TB drives.

[-] rtxn@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

This is not meant for human beings. A creature that needs over 140 TB of storage in a single device can definitely afford to run them in some distributed redundancy scheme with hot swaps and just shred failed units. We know they're not worried about being wasteful.

[-] MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 1 points 3 months ago

This is not meant for human beings.

This is for like, Smaug but if he hoarded classic anime and the entirety of Steam or something. Lol

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[-] pHr34kY@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I don't get how a single person would have that much data. I fit my whole life from the first shot I took on a digital camera in 2001... Onto a 4TB drive.

...and even then, two thirds of it is just pirated movies.

[-] billwashere@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

Amateur 😀

But seriously I probably have close to 100 TB of music, TV shows, movies, books, audiobooks, pictures, 3d models, magazines, etc.

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[-] pound_heap@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 months ago

Does the increased density mean that the speed also goes up? It would be nice if a 7200 RPM drive could finally saturate SATA3 bandwidth.

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[-] solrize@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 months ago

As a result, will be able to offer drives beyond 140 TB in the 2030s.

Um thanks but tell us about 2026?

[-] lemmyng@piefed.ca 2 points 3 months ago

Shrimp platters.

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this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026
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