WD now shipping the 12 TB HGST Ultrastar He12 enterprise hard drive

Although hard drives are slowly becoming obsolete, especially when talking about mobile computing, they still offer the best price per GB of storage space and will remain on the market for a while. Western Digital's wholly owned subsidiary HGST has just begun shipping the massive 12 TB Ultrastar He12 hard drive for the enterprise market.

This new 3.5-inch hard drive features an eight platter design and uses Perpendicular Magnetic Recording. Its MTBF rating stands at 2.5 million hours, and the five-year warranty confirms this is a drive built to last. This helium-filled drive is available with 6 Gbps SATA or 12 Gbps SAS interfaces and uses 54 percent less power than the existing 8 TB air-filled drives.

HGST 12 TB Ultrastar He12 also comes with Instant Secure Erase and Self-Encrypting Drive options, Advanced Format 4Kn and 512e models being also available. Unfortunately, there is no information on pricing, since these drives usually go to data centers and large businesses, so their price varies depending on the number purchased.