HGST launches MegaScale DC SATA HDD

LONDON, UK: HGST announces that it is shipping its new MegaScale DC 4000.B, a 3.5-inch, 4TB, 6 Gb/s SATA hard disk drive (HDD). As the company's second-generation MegaScale drive, the new MegaScale DC 4000.B has been further optimised based on customer feedback to meet the explosive growth of infrequently accessed data, while balancing the right mix of power, capacity, performance and reliability.

As part of a tiered storage strategy, the MegaScale DC 4000.B is designed for low-workload applications such as bulk storage for unstructured or big data, disk-to-disk backup, online archives, or long-term data retention where cost-per-GB, watt-per-GB and GB-per-square foot are critical parameters.

"With the explosive adoption of free email, social networks and Internet services, the capacity requirements for cloud and hyperscale data centers are growing astronomically. These environments are constantly looking for ways to improve their storage infrastructure costs and the bottom line," said Brendan Collins, VP of product marketing, HGST. The 4TB MegaScale DC 4000.B offers 33 percent more capacity than 3TB HDDs and supports 512e Advanced Format for custom data center environments.

Targeting 24/7 low workloads that operate within 180TB per year, the MegaScale DC 4000.B is rated at 800K MTBF, and offers specifications of 1 in 1014 non-recoverable bit error rate and 300K load/unload cycles. The MegaScale DC 4000.B features a Dual Stage Actuator (DSA) and Enhanced Rotational Vibration Safeguard (RVS) technology for full performance, better stability and more reliability in rack-mount drive bays and servers.

Utilising HGST's CoolSpin technology, the drive uses up to 45 per cent less operating power and 29 per cent reduced idle power when compared to current 4TB 7,200 RPM drives, which can mean significant cost savings for data centre customers. The MegaScale DC 4000.B also offers five levels of Advanced Power Management around power consumption including: normal idle, unload idle, low RPM idle, standby, and sleep.

MegaScale DC 4000.B hard drive also comes with optional bulk data encryption (BDE) with enhanced secure erase technology for added data security, and easy and safe hard drive redeployment.