- WD has 40 TB hard drives already being qualified with hyperscale customers
- UltraSMR and ePMR allow higher platter densities without changing drive form factors
- Dual Pivot adds another actuator without sacrificing usable drive capacity
Western Digital has revealed plans to scale hard drives far beyond current commercial limits, starting with a 40TB model already in customer qualification.
The company says its 40TB UltraSMR ePMR drives are already in the hands of hyperscale customers, with volume production expected in the second half of 2026.
This 40TB model uses UltraSMR and ePMR technologies, which enable more data to be written per second. plate while maintaining the reliability levels expected in large data centers.
Dual Pivot – a key technology for scaling hard drives
Central to WD’s roadmap is Dual Pivot Technology, which introduces a second independently controlled actuator in the same 3.5-inch case.
Unlike previous dual-actuator approaches, this design avoids capacity trade-offs and does not require customer-side software modifications.
By reducing the distance between discs and activating additional plates per drive, WD says the design supports higher capacity and improved throughput.
When combined with High Bandwidth Drive Technology, sequential input and output performance can scale up to 4x power levels.
High Bandwidth Drive technology enables simultaneous reading and writing across multiple heads and tracks, increasing throughput without increasing power consumption.
This approach supports WD’s claim that it can scale to 100TB hard drives by 2029 without forcing customers to replace existing infrastructure or move workloads entirely to SSD.
According to WD’s roadmap, after shipping the 40TB ePMR drives this year, it will begin work on 40TB and 44TB HAMR-based drives.
In 2027, ePMR capacity remains at 40TB while HAMR ramps further, but in 2028 ePMR scales to 60TB and HAMR reaches the same capacity as it moves into wider production.
The following year, 2029, HAMR-based drives will reach 100 TB, with that capacity extending to 2030 and beyond.
As capacity increases, power consumption becomes a limiting factor for data centers deploying thousands of drives.
WD has recognized this by developing power-optimized hard drives that swap random input and output for higher density and lower power consumption.
Targeted at training and inference workloads, these drives reduce power consumption by approximately 20% while maintaining sub-second access times.
It is aimed at large datasets that need to remain quickly accessible, yet are too expensive to store entirely on SSD.
WD expects these power-optimized drives to enter customer qualification in 2027, which is in line with the timeline for higher capacity models beyond 40TB.
Whether these technologies can be scaled smoothly to 100 TB while maintaining reliability and cost benefits will only become clear when wider deployments begin.
“For the past year, WD has been focused on executing and accelerating innovation, which has enabled us to reinvent the hard drive to meet the demands of artificial intelligence,” said Irving Tan, CEO of WD.
“Today, we’re showcasing innovation that reflects our deep connection to our customers and how we’re meeting the demand for capacity, scale, quality, improved performance and ease of technology adoption.”
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