G-forbes Western Digital Ultrastar DC HC550 3.5" 18 TB Serial ATA III

Ultrastar DC HC500 Series

High Capacity for Massive Data and Lower Total Cost of Ownership

Driving Up Capacity and Driving Down TCO for Cloud and Hyperscale Data Centers

The breadth and depth of Big Data is driving the universal need for higher capacities across a broad spectrum of applications and workloads. Laying the foundation for a worry-free data center, Western Digital delivers the capacity to conquer the data explosion with the Ultrastar DC HC500 series of hard disk drives (HDDs). The DC HC500 series is designed for public and private cloud environments where storage density and cost-efficient infrastructure is critical.

The 18TB/16TB Ultrastar DC HC550 HDDs are the first commercial implementation of Energy-Assisted Magnetic Recording technology and utilize the industry’s first Triple Stage Actuator. These technologies, integrated with HelioSeal on a 9-disk platform, deliver the highest areal density and unmatched Total Cost of Ownership for customer and market needs.

Solves TCO Challenges
- High Capacity
Up to 18TB HDDs, drop-in ready for Big Data workloads
- Low Power
Up to 61% lower idle W/TB than 10TB Ultrastar air-filled drives
- More Reliable
25% higher MTBF rating than air-filled HDDs

Continuous Innovation for Highest Capacities and Lower TCO

The Ultrastar DC HC550 18TB CMR HDD and Ultrastar DC HC650 20TB SMR HDD are delivering industry leading capacity for the data center through a combination of new and proven technologies.

Western Digital is the first to deliver Energy-Assisted Magnetic Recording (EAMR) technology and a Triple Stage Actuator (TSA). These new technologies combined with further mechanical innovations and HelioSeal technology provide the industry’s highest capacities to enable data at scale with optimized TCO for data center architectures, while maintaining workload reliability and performance.