Western Digital Announces World’s First 14TB Hard Drive

Storage capacities have increased significantly over the past few years as prices have come down and the technology has advanced. We’ve still not hit the peak as yet. Western Digital has now announced what it calls the world’s first 14TB hard drive. Yes, you get 14 terabytes of storage in a single hard drive, called the HGST Ultrastar Hs14. Rolls off the tongue pretty nicely, doesn’t it?

Western Digital says that the 14TB hard drive is more efficient and faster than the 12TB ones that it released last year.

Similar to any other very high capacity spinning drive, the HGST Ultrastar Hs14 is filled with helium. It’s essential for drives that have moving parts, in this particular case, helium ensures that there’s less drag on the platters of this 7200 RPM spinning drive.

Western Digital has been able to achieve this level of storage capacity by using Shingled Magnetic Recording on eight platters. The drive tracks overlap each other like shingle and thus result in greater areal density. It also allows for more power efficiency. WD says that the device consumes 5.2W at idle and 6.2W during operation.

The Hs14 is available in both SATA and SAS configurations. It’s designed to run around the clock for at least 2.5 million hours so it’s a great option for enterprise and server usage. It’s likely to be quite expensive but since it’s a host-managed device, it’s not really meant for the average consumer.

However, some of the tech that Western Digital has introduced with the Hs14 will eventually trickle down to its consumer drives in a couple of years.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Gadgets
Tags: western digital