• HDD - WD HGST ULTRASTAR He12 12TB DC HC520 HUH721212ALN60y

HDD - WD HGST ULTRASTAR He12 12TB DC HC520 HUH721212ALN60y

  • Built upon a completely new platform featuring eight platters, up from seven inside previous-gen drives that use Western Digital’s HelioSeal technology
  • The increase of hard drive capacity by 20% to 12 TB brings substantial benefits to operators of cloud and exascale datacenters because such HDDs enable them to boost their storage capacity

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HDD - WD HGST ULTRASTAR He12 12TB DC HC520 HUH721212ALN60y

HDD - WD HGST ULTRASTAR He12 12TB Overview The HGST Ultrastar He12 is based on Western Digital’s fourth-generation HelioSeal technology, which uses eight perpendicular magnetic recording platters with 1.5 TB capacity

HDD - WD HGST ULTRASTAR He12 12TB Overview

The HGST Ultrastar He12 is based on Western Digital’s fourth-generation HelioSeal technology, which uses eight perpendicular magnetic recording platters with 1.5 TB capacity each. To add the eighth platter, Western Digital had to redesign internal components of its HDDs (including arms and heads) significantly. In addition, the company increased areal density of the platters, which improved the sequential read/write performance of the new hard drives. In particular, Western Digital claims that the HGST Ultrastar He12 has a sustained transfer rate of 255 MB/s, an average latency of 4.16 ms, as well as an average seek time of around 8 ms.

Just like other enterprise-class nearline drives, the Ultrastar He12 features a 7200 RPM spindle speed as well as all the technologies currently found in such hard drives from HGST, including a special micro-actuator that improves the accuracy of head positioning in multi-drive environments (which naturally improves performance, integrity, and reliability), rebuild assist mode to speed up RAID recovery time, and others. Finally, the new drives have SED options as well as Instant Secure Erase feature so to either quickly redeploy or retire a HDD.

The increase of hard drive capacity by 20% to 12 TB brings substantial benefits to operators of cloud and exascale datacenters because such HDDs enable them to boost their storage capacity by 20% (or more, assuming that they are using drives with lower than 10 TB capacity today) without expanding footprint of their building or significantly increasing their power consumption. For example, a standard server rack can store 2400 TB of data if fully populated with 10 TB HDDs today. Meanwhile, if 12 TB hard drives are installed into the same rack, its total storage capacity increases to 2880 TB at the same power and at the same space.

Since Western Digital’s HGST Ultrastar He12 are aimed at large enterprises, the company does not advertise their recommended prices; the prices customers will pay depends on the number of drives purchased as well as some other factors. Since Western Digital will eventually offer helium-filled HDDs with eight platters to other kinds of customers too, so once this technology trickles down the general public will be able to take advantage of the fourth-generation HelioSeal platform as well.

Western Digital plans to start shipments of its HGST Ultrastar He12 drives featuring shingled magnetic recording (SMR) platters and 14 TB of capacity. These drives are designed primarily for archival applications, where data is written sequentially in huge chunks (and is hardly ever updated) and where the peculiarities of SMR do not have a major impact on performance. The upcoming SMR HDDs will have to be managed by their hosts and therefore far not all customers of Western Digital are going to be able to take advantage of them.

Form factor: 3.5 inch

Number of platters: 8

Maximum areal density: 864Gbits per square inch

Sector sizes (SATA): 4Kn – 4,096

512e – 512

Sector sizes (SAS): 4Kn – 4096, 4112, 4160, 4224

512e – 512, 520, 528

Data buffer: 256MB

Rotational speed: 7,200RPM

Latency average: 4.16ms

Interface transfer rate: 600MB/s (SATA)

1,200MB/s (SAS)

Sustained transfer rate: 255MB/s (typical)

Seek time: 8.0ms read, 8.6ms write

Power rating (SATA): 5.3 watts idle, 7.2 watts operating

Power rating (SAS): 6.1 watts idle, 9.8 watts operating

MTBF: 2.5 million

Dimensions: 1.02 (H) x 4 (W) x 5.78 (D) inches

Weight: 1.45 pounds


Datasheet 1
Title Version Date Size
Ultrastar He12

Tags: HDD, WD, HGST, ULTRASTAR, He12, 12TB, DC, HC520, HUH721212ALN60y