Western Digital's record-breaking storage capacity. 128TB SSD? Yes, please
In August of this year, the data storage market expanded significantly thanks to new products from Western Digital. On August 5, the American company announced several new storage media at the Memory and Storage 2024 (FMS) conference, which was held in Santa Clara, California. Very capacious storage media were presented – SD cards and SSDs for both regular users and data centers. Details under the cut!
Details about new products
Western Digital presented SD cards for smartphones, drones and digital cameras with a record capacity of 8 TB. The new product has become the most capacious on the market today. In addition, the company announced solid-state drives for data centers with a capacity of 128 TB. SSDs are designed to work with resource-intensive applications and artificial intelligence systems for fast and reliable processing of huge amounts of data. Western Digital plans to begin their mass production and release in 2025.
Also at this conference, WD presented prototypes of external SSDs under the SanDisk brand with a capacity of up to 16 TB. These devices are still in development and are not yet ready for market. And by the end of 2024, Western Digital will begin selling enterprise SSDs with a capacity of 32 to 64 TB, which are currently in the process of testing before launching production.
The company also announced the world's first 32TB hard drives using SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) technology. This technology allows for increased recording density, making HDDs ideal for storing large amounts of data.
Western Digital's competition in this area is Seagate, which in 2024 introduced the Mozaic 3+ platform, which supports HAMR (Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording) technology. This technology uses a laser to increase recording density and could become the basis for creating hard drives with a capacity of over 30 TB.
Record-breaking solutions for data centers
The solid-state drive from Western Digital is based on the latest BiCS8 QLC NAND flash memory. This SSD is targeted at high-load server applications and artificial intelligence systems, including large language models (Large Language Models, LLM). The device is made in the U.2/U.3 form factor.
BiCS8 NAND memory 218 layersThe chips use CBA (CMOS directly bonded to Array) connection technology. It is a development of earlier technologies such as CMOS-under-array (CuA) from Micron and Periphery-under-Cell (4D PUC) from SK hynix. The new technology allows the controller to exchange data at a speed of up to 3,600 megatransfers per second (MT/s).
Western Digital isn’t the only company working on high-capacity SSDs. For example, in March 2023, Pure Storage announced plans to release 300 TB SSDs, to be introduced in 2026. Then, Solidigm, a subsidiary of South Korea’s SK Hynix, began shipping its D5-P5336 family of server SSDs, with models offering capacities of up to 61.44 TB. At the time of their announcement, these drives were the highest-capacity PCIe 4.0 devices available.
At FMS 2024, Samsung also announced that they have the technology to create 120TB drives, and Solidigm demonstrated a 122TB SSD prototype using QLC memory at the same conference.
8TB SD Cards
Western Digital's SanDisk brand has also unveiled two innovative memory cards: the world's first 8TB SD card and a 4TB microSD card. The new products were announced shortly after the release of the first 4TB SD card in April.
In the modern era of 8K video and high-resolution images, capacity is critical for many users. Large memory cards allow videographers and photographers to shoot longer without having to change cards frequently. With the SanDisk 8TB SDUC UHS-I SD card installed in one of the best mirrorless cameras, you can take approximately 165,000 RAW photos at 24MP.
The new 4TB microSD card is designed to work in today's drones, smartphones, and portable gaming devices like the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck. With the SanDisk 4TB microSDUC UHS-I card installed in the Nintendo Switch, you can store more than 660 games at 12GB each, which is significantly more than any other microSD card on the market.
Interesting fact: Samsung plans to release SD Express cards with a capacity of up to 256 GB and a read speed of up to 800 MB/s. The new product is suitable for those who prefer high data writing and reading speeds.
As for hard drives, companies have already come close to the technological limit of capacity – most likely, there will be no significant breakthroughs. Although, who knows, perhaps manufacturers will figure out how to significantly expand the capacity of HDDs.
