cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/24650125
Because nothing says “fun” quite like having to restore a RAID that just saw 140TB fail.
Western Digital this week outlined its near-term and mid-term plans to increase hard drive capacities to around 60TB and beyond with optimizations that significantly increase HDD performance for the AI and cloud era. In addition, the company outlined its longer-term vision for hard disk drives’ evolution that includes a new laser technology for heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), new platters with higher areal density, and HDD assemblies with up to 14 platters. As a result, WD will be able to offer drives beyond 140 TB in the 2030s.
Western Digital plans to volume produce its inaugural commercial hard drives featuring HAMR technology next year, with capacities rising from 40TB (CMR) or 44TB (SMR) in late 2026, with production ramping in 2027. These drives will use the company’s proven 11-platter platform with high-density media as well as HAMR heads with edge-emitting lasers that heat iron-platinum alloy (FePt) on top of platters to its Curie temperature — the point at which its magnetic properties change — and reducing its magnetic coercivity before writing data.
with optimizations that significantly increase HDD performance for the AI and cloud era
Can somebody do anything with a normal consumer in mind these days? 😭
No, and it’s by design.
You’re gonna lease a tablet and use cloud-based storage services and like it.
The dystopia is here.
Not until somebody shuts off the investor money faucet for AI. Then they’ll come crawling back — although inevitably not until after they go whining to all the world’s governments about wanting a bailout.
But hey, look at the bright side. We’ve already had the cryptocurrency mining boom and bust, and “AI” boom and soon to be bust. There’s still time for some idiot to invent the next tech scam fad which will conveniently require a shitload of hardware for no recognizably useful purpose.
Then they’ll come crawling back — although inevitably not until after they go whining to all the world’s governments about wanting a bailout.
And don’t forget the part where, whether they get a bailout or not, they’ll still have to double the prices of everything to make up for all the money they lost on that stupid AI bubble exploding in their face (which all of us are somehow to blame for, obviously, which is why we have to pay them back for it)
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters NAS Network-Attached Storage RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage SSD Solid State Drive mass storage ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity
5 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 8 acronyms.
[Thread #72 for this comm, first seen 8th Feb 2026, 00:30] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
If you were to ask me a year ago I’d tell you that HDD’s would be the next dead storage medium but now SSD’s cost more then I spent on my rig and HDD’s are pushing 140 TB’s
I just looked up prices for servers we sell out work.
They saw a price increase of 47%.
The SSDs and RAM saw an increase of about 25% and ~150% respectively.
Absolutely ludicrous and BS (ironically both the price and available stock increased. So it’s just preying on the market instead of an actual shortage lol)
We’ve come a long way:
Okay cool, cool, so does this mean ridiculous data centers will use these things, and then can I get another 4TB RED for my NAS so I can fit my whole life on a mirrored total of 8TB without paying 8x what it’s worth, please?
Thaaaaanks…
Is there a Lemmy community for trading surplus hardware yet?
I have a pile of HDDs and servers that I no longer use. I’ve transitioned almost all mine to 20tb+. I might have 8 or 10 4tb REDs laying around. They’re old, probably have thousands of power on hours in the smart data though.
I set up a community on midwest.social and the lemmy.world one is dead (because I’m in the midwest) !homelabsales@midwest.social
Right on!
I don’t know if there’s a hardware trading community yet. I think one challenge is simply how lemmy seems to aim for more general anonymity than reddit, and the DM system isn’t really used to my understanding. (Except by “that fediverse girl” LOL)
Establishing a sense of reasonable trustworthiness to thwart bad actors might take some work.
I set up a community on midwest.social (because I’m in the midwest) !homelabsales@midwest.social
Holy fuck can you imagine how long it would take to re-stripe a failed drive in a z2 array 😭
Not a clue. Care to eli5?
When you are running a server just to store files (a NAS) you generally set it up so multiple physical hard disks are joined together into an array so if one fails, none of the data is lost. You can replace a failed drive by taking it out and putting in a new working drive and then the system has to copy all of the data over from the other drives. This process can take many hours to run even with the 10-20 TB drive you get today, so doing the same thing with 140 TB drive would take days.
I just hope smaller sized drives become cheaper. The word “hope” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
Ten years from now…
Amazon search: “hard drive”
Result: 4TB $198
I think ten years from now you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone even wasting their time on something so small.
so you say, but people still collect “antique” hardware.
Well, retro etc. but I wouldn’t consider this to be that. There’s no inherent value of a run-of-the-mill drive with merely lower storage capacity. And certainly not worth a premium.
it’s not antique yet. i still have my 5.25" diskettes with quest for glory 2 on them and they’re almost antique. i think the usb drive that reads them still works. give them another couple years.
do HDDs work better than SSDs in space? because of the cosmic rays and shit? or something about intermittent power? no, really, this is a real problem that they could be already solving, one i know jack shit about.
So you want to be a hero!!! I only ever played the first one but fell in love with it.
Erana’s Peace. hidengoseke. Meep’s Peep, my friend.
the second was the best in the series, but they all have their charm. i really need to buy the new game the coles made
Probably still with only 1 year warranty…
And if it breaks at 10 months and they take another 2 to send your replacement back, well, they no longer need to send one that actually works this time either
Question: Are failures due to issues on a specific platter? Meaning, could a ZRAID theoretically use specific platters as a way to replicate data and not require 140TB of resilvering on a failure?
@Fmstrat @veeesix Since there’s two very diffrent questions there… The first, “where do the failures happen?”: anywhere. It could be the controller dying (in which case the platters themselves are fine if you replace the board, but otherwise the whole thing is toast). It could be the head breaking. It could be issues with a specific platter. It could be something that affects _all_ the platters (like dust getting inside the sealed area). So basically, it very much depends.
@Fmstrat @veeesix The second, could you do raid across specific platters - yes and no. The drive firmware specifically hides the details of the underlying platter layout. But if you targeted a specific model, you could probably hack something together that would do raid across the platters. But given the answer to the first question, why would you?
And how much will that cost? Sounds like something fantastic for my Jellyfin server. I’ll have all the 4k HDR I can get my hands on.
If you have to ask, you can’t afford it 😭
Maybe I can. The only thing you know about me is my username 😂
I would not put 130TB on any one piece of hardware, because when it fails, it will be a very sad day.
Don’t even mention it. I have real world experience in that area 😂
Going by the usual trends of $20+/tb, I’d say. fuckin expensive
Very cheap. Just kidding. Fuck that shit
