Western Digital Unveils New Technologies for Ultra-High Capacity Drives

Earlier this year, Western Digital announced deploying two new technologies that can push the limits of their high-capacity hard drives. The first arrival, with a capacity of 44 terabytes, is expected to be released in 2026.

Heat-assisted magnetic recording technology, or HAMR, surpasses traditional physical storage limits on hard drives by heating spots on hard disk platters for a fraction of a second. This technique allows for greater storage density.

HAMR can be integrated with heat dot magnetic recording, or HDMR, to push these limits even further, with theoretical limits surpassing 100TB.

While both Western Digital and Seagate are testing these new HAMR drives, there are likely issues that will still need to be ironed out before they can run reliably in data centers and studios. Western Digital targets a launch date of late 2026, but as with any technology, that’s subject to change.

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