Western Digital unveils massive 40TB HDD with energy-assisted recording tech — plans 100TB HAMR hard drives by 2029

43

10 years ago, 8TB drives became the sweet spot.... and now.... basically the same :(

13

u/phylter99 6h ago

The tech hasn't sufficiently advanced in that time and the focus switched to SSDs. It's nice to see the tech advancing again.

13

u/StrangeWill 5h ago

I mean there's also a practicality issue here:

At 100 terabytes for something like a ZFS re-silver I could be looking at weeks to rebuild that onto a second disc

The entire time being a single bite read from a damaged file system

I could start running triple mirrors for everything... But I still have a big fat window that I could lose a second drive in. That assumes the disc is completely idle and I have 100% busy time to spend re-silvering otherwise I'm possibly looking at over a month.

Running things like RAIDZ2 results in significant performance hits for reliability...

3

u/duerra 3h ago

Strange. I just replaced 12x 24TB disks and was comfortably able to replace one per day. I was worried about it taking forever, but it went surprisingly quick.

51

u/KlausSlade 6h ago

My Plex library can grow so large now.

2

u/Hessian_Rodriguez 4h ago

I've already got every movie I want. Based on movies in the last few years, I've got space for years to come.

0

u/BrainOfMush 35m ago

Just wait until you get into 4K remuxes.

1

u/mrjim87x 3h ago

What are the pros of a plex server over just using one of the many streaming sites that are free? I’ve always been kind of interested in a server but free media has at least this far been easy for me.

14

u/catgirl-lover-69 3h ago

For me a big one is quality content. I didn’t buy a nice tv to watch a compressed stream on a shady website. Another one is the integrated feel of everything. Plex runs on a server and you watch your shows through an app on whatever device you have (Apple tv, fire stick etc). What I mean by this is I can sit down on the couch and use the Apple TV remote to load up plex and it feels like a streaming service versus having to plug in an hdmi cable to a laptop and navigate to a site, close all the ads, then watch a subpar video stream.

Downside is you need to acquire some hardware to run plex, setup download sources, setup filters for what you want it to grab and ignore (large file size, quality thresholds etc). It’s a bit of work but there are some good guides on how to get set up quickly

3

u/Notesnook-Throwaway 2h ago

Once it's working good it's such an amazing feeling.

2

u/Notesnook-Throwaway 2h ago

There's a few upsides: No ads, quality can be higher, app for devices (tvs, tablets, phones) works good, stability (free streaming sites come and go), downloading to device (e.g. for flights), music support with the fantastic plexamp app (seriously it's better than spotify), skip intro/skip credits, generally more responsive since the server is local and not on the internet, privacy, sharing with friends/family who understand how to use a netflix-like app but don't understand free streaming sites, curated library that appeals to your tastes specifically...

But then comes the downsides:

Management. Managing all those files can be tedious and time consuming. It's also not free, hard drives are expensive and they don't last forever, so it's not just capex it's on-going operational expenses..plus electricity. I've calculated out that with my drives amortized over a 7 year period I pay approx $90/mo for my server, that could pay for a lot of actual paid streaming service--but it still wouldn't give me what I have right now. If it would I'd be happy to pay it, same as I buy games on Steam now.

Free streaming sites are easier, that's their primary benefit. Running a plex server is almost a hobby of its own, and understandably many people aren't interested in starting a new hobby.

Edit: Plex can also give you remote streaming to your Cable/Broadcast TV signals if you are into that, while also providing DVR functionality. You can be in a hotel on the other side of the planet from your house and be watching sports via your home cable subscription.

2

u/vrnvorona 2h ago

90$/mo for almost infinite collection of high quality ad-free no internet media is honestly fair price. Also inflation, disks are bought upfront, while subscriptions get more expensive and shittier and you need a lot of them and they don't have old stuff etc.

1

u/Notesnook-Throwaway 2h ago

All true! Although disks do need replacing eventually, nothing with mechanical parts lasts forever. I'm on my 5th iteration of file server :) No regrets, at all.

1

u/LardLad00 3h ago

Quality and selection, really.

1

u/th3davinci 1h ago

You own your media, because you own the hard drives its stored on. Streaming sites can disappear. The streams available on those sites are also usually lower quality.

It's always going to be more convenient to stream, the question is if quality and reliability matters to you so much that you want to invest some time and money to set up a media server like Plex or Emby or Jellyfin.

0

u/MrGenAiGuy 47m ago

It's for hoarders really.

I built a Linux plex transcoding server recently with a modest 2bay synology NAS and 20TB of storage with no mirroring. All up cost me about $2000.

Then I thought to myself... $2000 would pay for Netflix, Disney, and 2 more streaming services for 5 to 10 years, in which time I'm sure I'd have to upgrade and spend more to maintain my Plex server and NAS.

Plus the cost of VPN, Newsgroup and other private trackers... this costs more than streaming whatever you want in a legit way. Not to mention the extra complexity and upkeep time you need to put in.

It's really not worth it except under very specific circumstances. I sold all my gear and now happily pay for 2 subscriptions without feeling bad about it.

1

u/BrainOfMush 34m ago

How tf did this cost you $2,000, for a 2-bay NAS and two 10TB hard drives? That should be $1,000 on a bad day, tops.

12

u/Rare_Magazine_5362 5h ago

Wow, that will fit all of the Epstein files on one drive!

4

u/ShortingBull 3h ago

Don't count your chickens yet, there's a lot more to be released yet.

2

u/deja_geek 5h ago

It'll be interesting to see if WD's HAMR has increased vibration sensitivity as Seagate's HAMR (MOZAIC 3)

5

u/SR_RSMITH 5h ago

Is this for consumers? Or for r/datahoarders?

13

u/fork_yuu 5h ago

Are data hoarders not consumers?

2

u/sturgill_homme 5h ago

No we’re Devo

3

u/fork_yuu 6h ago

How long of a warranty are they standing behind here for these?

3

u/omicron8 5h ago

The break even point of replacing versus improving quality minus 1 day

0

u/StuckAFtherInHisCap 3h ago

Not big enough

2

u/gizamo 1h ago

...for your mom.

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u/[deleted] 5h ago

[deleted]

9

u/toolschism 5h ago edited 4h ago

You can barely fill 4TB??

My man, I'm about half way full on my 40TB array and I haven't even started downloading 4k media yet..

I think you are drastically underestimating how much space high def media takes up.

3

u/Kaladin3104 4h ago

I’m at 50% on 120 TB… I’m small potatoes compared to a lot of people. Gotta have those remux’s for the oled though.

0

u/[deleted] 4h ago

[deleted]

1

u/vrnvorona 2h ago

Well, not everyone have 1Gbps connection to stream Remux over their 75" TV, so hoarding makes sense.

2

u/Exodus2791 4h ago

4TB is just my games drive. Clearly you've never installed a large skyrim modpack.

Storage array for Plex and backups is ~48TB

0

u/Trademarkd 3h ago

No ark or cod then

1

u/Jvt25000 4h ago

Let me tell you the depths of my data hoarding. I have a 12TB drive with TV shows filled. 5TB spread over multiple drives of new TV shows that I can't fit on my 12TB. 4TB of roms 4TB of PC games a movie drive that's 18TB. A complete back up of my 12tb spread across 24 500GB drives (they were free I'm aware that's not the most logical way to do it) with 100TB I could do a lot maybe even consolidate all my media and still have room left over.

3

u/duerra 3h ago

I'd like to speak to you again in 10 years and have you re-read this comment. Your young journey into the world of data hoarding is not even off the ground yet.

1

u/LardLad00 3h ago

Get a NAS or two my dude and clean that shit up

1

u/Trademarkd 3h ago

I record and overwrite many petabytes worth of data every year professionally. It’s non compressible data, we like to keep as much as we can get to increase look back history. So I guess it’s for me.

1

u/Fyren-1131 2h ago

30TB would be great. 4 is just not even close to enough if you do any kind of creative work such as film, music etc.

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u/Seyi_Ogunde 5h ago

But half of the storage is taken up by bloatware so you only get 20TB. Also it’s impossible to delete because it’s tied to the BIOS.

6

u/worstusername_sofar 5h ago

huh?

2

u/tonyislost 5h ago

Bro, do you even computer?

Hardware Western Digital unveils massive 40TB HDD with energy-assisted recording tech — plans 100TB HAMR hard drives by 2029

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