Western Digital unveils new 15 TB hard drive, the largest HDD yet

Need a lot of storage space but don’t have a lot of physical space? Western Digital has your back with its new 15TB mechanical HDD, announced earlier this week.

When released, the 15TB Ultrastar DC HC620 will be the highest capacity drive on the market, replacing Western Digital’s own 14 TB drive they released in April. The drive is designed for cloud storage and data center services. Western Digital said that the drive should be able to meet the needs of “large video surveillance ‘smart city’ initiatives, storage for regulatory compliance and Big Data storage.”

Western Digital built the drive using HelioSeal technology, which uses helium to increase the number of physical platters sealed within a drive. As it is less dense, helium allows platters to be stacked closer together and reduces friction and strain when the platters spin. As a result, more drive platters can be stacked on top of each other, and the platters should last longer while using less energy.

Pricing has yet to be announced, as has a release date. However, based on the price of WD’s 14TB data center drive, don’t expect the largest HDD in the industry to come cheap. Considering the relatively high cost of running a data center, that shouldn’t come as a surprise to most enterprise customers.

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