Western Digital (WD) announces high-bandwidth HDD with multiple magnetic heads and power-optimized HDD that reduces power consumption by 20%
Western Digital, a major storage company, announced on February 3, 2026 local time, that it will unify its brand name under 'WD' and announce two different HDD families to meet AI needs.
Western Digital Accelerates Storage Innovation for AI Era | WD
Innovation Day - WD_Innovation Day 2026_TO POST_020326.pdf
(PDF file) https://investor.wdc.com/static-files/c4cec531-0128-4c17-b9c2-f25644c658db
Western Digital doubles the performance of hard drives with dual-actuator High-Bandwidth, with path to 8X performance increase — Power-Optimized HDDs will reduce power by 20 percent | Tom's Hardware
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/western-digital-doubles-the-performance-of-hard-drives-with-dual-actuator-high-bandwidth-with-path-to-8x-performance-increase-power-optimized-hdds-will-reduce-power-by-20-percent
In recent years, SSDs have replaced HDDs in most consumer PCs, but HDDs remain highly sought after in data centers, offering high capacity at low cost that SSDs cannot. Western Digital announced its storage roadmap tailored to AI needs at its Innovation Day 2026 event on February 3rd, unifying its brand under the 'WD' name.
Western Digital said, 'As AI generates massive amounts of data, demand for data storage is exploding. To address this, WD has focused on delivering capacity, performance and power efficiency that meets customer needs, proven reliability and economics, and fast certification without disrupting customer operations.'
Western Digital announced that it is strengthening its efforts in ePMR (Energy-Assisted Perpendicular Magnetic Recording) and HAMR , which are technologies that increase HDD capacity. The company also announced that the world's largest capacity 40TB UltraSMR ePMR HDD is currently undergoing qualification with two major customers and is scheduled to begin mass production in the second half of 2026. It also reported that certification of WD HAMR HDDs is underway.
Western Digital has announced a roadmap that includes leveraging HAMR innovations to increase ePMR capacity to 60TB by 2028 and achieving 100TB of capacity with HAMR by 2029.
Western Digital also announced two different HDD families. One of them is a 'High Bandwidth HDD' that meets the performance demands of AI workloads. This concept is primarily based on 'using multiple magnetic heads to read data from the media.' The technologies that enable high-bandwidth HDDs are further divided into 'High Bandwidth Drive Technology' and 'Dual Pivot Technology.'
High-bandwidth drive technology simply uses multiple magnetic heads to read and write simultaneously, achieving twice the bandwidth of conventional drives. Dual-pivot technology adds an independently moving actuator, achieving twice the bandwidth and twice
HDDs with high-bandwidth drive technology are already available to customers, and HDDs with dual-pivot technology will be available in 2028.
Another HDD family announced by Western Digital is the 'Power Optimized HDD,' which reduces power consumption at the storage tier by 20%. AI training and inference generates massive amounts of valuable cold data, which is frequently accessed but is too expensive to run on traditional capacity-focused drives.
Western Digital explains that its Power Optimized HDDs are designed for cold data, minimizing random I/O to achieve high capacity and significantly reduced power consumption, and are expected to undergo initial customer qualification in 2027.
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