Western Digital makes a move to the cloud bulk-storage datacenter solution

While SSD gets the bulk of the publicity, Western Digital still looks to value priced rotating media as a big play in the cloud focused datacenter, where the massive amounts of data being stored require a cost effective, reliable data storage solution. WD thinks that they have successfully targeted this bulk storage niche with their new Se series hard drives.

With 2, 3, and 4TB capacities, these 7200 RPM 6 Gbps SATA drives feature a host of technologies that WD claims make for greater reliability and the perfect solution for the scale-out datacenter storage issue. They are backing that claim up with a 5 year warranty on these drives which they feel will put them at the sweet spot where bulk storage purchases are concerned. We will have to refrain from opining on that as they have not yet released the MSRP of the Se series drives.

The technologies that WD includes that they believe focus on the improved reliability include dynamic fly height, which adjusts the fly height of the heads in real time, Stable Trac, which secures the motor shaft at both ends to reduce vibration and improve tracking, a ,multi-axis shock sensor, and RAID-specific, time-limited error recovery (TLER), which focuses on preventing drive fallout caused by extended error recovery processes

WD is slotting the drives just below their existing Re series, which is available in both SATA and SAS interfaces and offers up 50% greater MTBF claims along with three times the projected workload capability. This seems to indicate that these drives are targeted at the less intensive datacenter workloads such as backup and as suitable media for data that is being aged out or little accessed, which does fit into many Information Lifecycle Management schemes.