Back in 2014, WD launched the World’s first 10TB Helium-filled Hard drive, the Ultrastar DC HC510. Nearly 5 years later, the company has unveiled its air-filled equivalent, the Ultrastar DC HC330.
According to WD, the new HC330 has up to 40% faster write speeds compared to its helium-filled counterpart thanks to Media Cache Plus (MCP) feature that was previously only available on the SAS SKUs of the Ultrastar DC HC510. The ‘Plus‘ refers to the additional flash-based non-volatile cache that has been incorporated in order to boost write speeds over short transfer lengths. The Ultrastar DC HC330 relies on six 1.66-TB CMR platters (the highest-capacity commercially available platters in the industry today) which enables it to increase its sustained transfer speed up to 273 MB/s, against the Helium drives’ 249 MB/s, despite also featuring a 7200 RPM spindle speed.
For enterprises, security is of paramount concern and the new HC 330 offers Self-Encrypting Drive, which is a hardware-based encryption, and a Dual-safe RSA signed firmware that helps prevent data loss by backing up the firmware and also provides additional security against hijacking.
The Ultrastar DC HC330 comes with a 5-year warranty and is expected to ship in September. There’s no information on pricing at this moment but it should be cheaper than its Helium-equivalent.
Source: blocksandfiles via extremetech