#western digital

Western Digital has unveiled its future roadmap for higher-capacity hard disk drives (HDD), eyeing to adopt a new technology called Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) in its drives by late 2026. Western Digital will launch its first HAMR-based drives in 2026, offering 36TB using conventional magnetic recording (CMR) and 44TB with shingled UltraSMR recording. Currently, two large cloud service providers are already testing the HAMR drives, although Western Digital hasn’t disclosed the drives' capacity or specific technology. Irving Tam, CEO of Western Digital, explained at the company’s investor call that they will begin with 36TB and 44TB models, and customer testing will wrap up by the end of 2026. Western Digital has expanded the storage capacity of its My Book drive by cramming 22TB and the My Book Duo with 44TB. Western Digital states that the reason for the expansion of storage is that most American Households now have at least 10 connected devices, and with the introduction of the new storage capacities means that more people can backup their devices without the worry of running out of storage. At CES 2020, Western Digital's SanDisk unveiled an 8TB SSD prototype and a 1TB USB Type-C dual-drive. Western Digital also launched a gaming SSD under its WD_Black brand. Read more in our articles including "Western Digital to introduce 44TB HDDs by 2026, up to 100TB by 2030" and "Western Digital My Book Duo Drive comes with 44TB size".