Western Digital Corp. today announced that it has begun shipping its fourth-generation helium-based hard drive with its 12TB HGST-branded Ultrastar® He12 hard drive. The Ultrastar He12 12TB hard drive is the next generation of the company’s award-winning high capacity enterprise-class drive with HelioSeal technology, providing customers with a data storage solution addressing the expansive information management needs and demanding performance requirements of today’s enterprise, cloud and hyperscale workloads.
Known for high quality, the enterprise-class Ultrastar He12 HDD features an industry-first eight-disk design, to deliver 12TB capacity using PMR technology in a standard 3.5-inch form factor. It is the world’s highest capacity hard disk drive for active random workloads. Utilizing Western Digital’s unique HelioSeal process that seals helium in the drive to help provide the highest capacity HDD and exceptional power efficiency, the Ultrastar He12 HDD comes in a single 12TB capacity point and offers either a SATA or SAS interface both using Advanced Format. HelioSeal technology utilizes helium with 1/7 the density of air, enabling the use of thinner disks, while maintaining a stable recording interface. The unique Ultrastar He12 HDD design adds an eighth disk, two more than the highest capacity air-based enterprise drive, which enabled the capacity increase to 12TB, 50 percent more than the highest air-based enterprise drive. This additional capacity provides for increased storage density, reducing associated data center infrastructure required to store a given amount of data. It also encompasses a low-power design without compromising performance, which helps reduce overall cost of ownership. The Ultrastar He12 HDD is perfect for any application that requires massive amounts of cost-effective storage.
