Western Digital has launched the WD Ultrastar DC HS760 series, a new line of professional HDD drives designed specifically to give the best of themselves in data centers that stand out for their high storage capacity, and also because they are equipped with dual actuators. Having two actuators in an HDD drive translates into a significant performance improvement, since we have two arms with their corresponding heads that can perform different read and write operations simultaneously.
The new WD Ultrastar DC HS760 have a storage capacity of 20 TB (terabytes), use the SAS interface and have a rotation speed of 7,200RPM. At the moment we do not have specific details about the performance that these new storage units will offer, but its configuration with a double actuator is a guarantee for what we have explained to you previously, and in the best possible scenario it should double performance on sequential read and write compared to a drive with a single actuator, while in random write and read operations the performance improvement would be 70%.
The WD Ultrastar DC HS760 series also integrates technology, based on iNAND, which means that these hard drives have a large amount of cache memory. We don’t have the exact figure, but I think it’s most likely that they come configured with between 512 MB and 1 GB cache. This is also very important because, as many of our readers will know, a larger cache translates to higher performance when it comes to storage drives, and it can make a big difference with intensive workloads.
As expected Western Digital has sealed the WD Ultrastar DC HS760 using heliuma gas that is less dense than air and that offers a series of important advantages, since it reduces friction, vibrations and energy consumption, It allows you to integrate more dishes in the same space and improves heat dissipation.
We don’t have pricing details yet, but we do know that the WD Ultrastar DC HS760 has a 2.5 million hour life cycle, and that it will come with five year warranty. In the next few days the sale price in the Spanish market should be confirmed.
