Something to look forward to: When Western Digital revealed its 20TB hard drive and new storage architecture earlier this year, it hadn't provided a concrete date or price for general availability. Now the drives appear to be on sale, though for a hefty price tag and still without a precise shipping date.
Western Digital first unveiled its 20TB enterprise-oriented hard drive with new OptiNAND technology at the end of August. OptiNAND uses embedded flash memory to store drive metadata, which Western Digital says allows for more storage and speeds up access to data. The company said it was sampling the new drives to select customers first while planning a wider release later in the year.
Now, the WD Gold 20TB hard drive with OptiNAND is available on Western Digital's online store for around $680. The store page still doesn't give a release date, but it pegs availability at one-to-two weeks. The checkout page also shows shipping as one-to-two weeks. It's unclear if that indicates the date range within which it plans to release the 20TB hard drive or if it has already sold out and new stock won't be in for another couple of weeks. So far, Western Digital hasn't made the 20TB hard drive available at any other retailer. The website also lists a 20TB Ultrastar hard drive but has no details on price or availability.
Seagate already shipped 20TB hard drives using HAMR technology last year. Both companies hope to have 30TB hard drives in the second half of this decade (second-generation HAMR in the case of Seagate), and Seagate plans to get to 100TB by 2030.