Hard Disk Drives

Seagate’s Exos keep growing both in capacity and in features. New models are introduced almost every quarter, while many older ones are refreshed or made end-of-life (EOL) status. Getting a list of current Exos models is easy. What’s harder is knowing which part number existed...

Western Digital (WD) has streamlined its data center drive offerings into four powerful and purpose-built series. Each one is tailored to a specific capacity range and performance requirement—making it easier than ever to select the right HDD for your storage infrastructure. 1...

WD's new 24TB model brings a platform shift from HC580 to HC590. While both versions share the same capacity and core specs, the HC590 has more platters with reduced areal density. the extra platter on HC590 has pushed the capacity upto 26TB

NAS (Network-Attached Storage) has seen a surge in popularity both with end users and enterprise customers.  While selecting a NAS brand is relatively straightforward, with a few top names dominating the market ( particularly Synology and QNAP) , choosing the right storage d...

selecting the right hard drive for your NAS (Network-Attached Storage) is crucial for achieving optimal performance and ensuring data reliability. Despite there being only three main HDD vendors, they offer a variety of products segmented into multiple classes. This guide pro...

MDD hard drives are mostly refurbished hard drives which fail a lot. We don't recommend buying these drives for your NAS.

Toshiba is a distant third in enterprise and NAS drives for internal drives, and the market is dominated by WD and Seagate, at least in the Middle East.We had Toshiba N300 NAS drives (competing with WD RED and Segate Ironwolf) and we had Toshiba MG enterprise drives (competing...

TLDR ; Seagate's new line of Ironwolf Pro drives has higher annual utilization, higher MTBF and supports an unlimited number of drive bays. It was the Ironwolf Pro series that started with the free data recovery service (which was later extended to Ironwolf as well). This quar...

The WD Red Plus 6TB CMR with 256MB is available now under the part number WD60EFPX. The part number so far available to channel was WD60EFZX. WD60EFPX vs WD60EFZX  : Higher Cache, Lower RPM, almost similar xfr rates The biggest difference is the cache. WD60EFPX has Double the ...

Not too long ago, Seagate launched Mach.2 drives with dual actuators. We expected that WD (and eventually Toshiba) would have to do the same to increase the throughput of hard drives, and that's exactly what happened with the introduction of WD Dual Actutaor drives last week. ...

TLDR : WD42PURZ is superior - higher recording density, higher cache and better performance Both WD40PURZ and WD42PURZ are CMR drives with 1 M Hour MTBF, 180TB/year workload and 3-year limited warranty. However WD42PURZ is ligher in weight which means it has less number of pla...

TLDR : The difference is in the number of platters and the cache. The WD22PURZ is newer with probably 1 disc and 256MB cache. There are 2 variants of 2TB Purple drives that can be ordered for the Q4 22 channel. The difference between the two is the higher recording density and...

In WD Red plus family, there are multiple variants in 4TB, 6TB, 8TB, 14TBcapacity. They are all CMR drives being RED plus but with different hardware specifications. Annual work load, warranty and MTBF etc are all the same for these models , except RPM and Cache  ( and Interna...

As hard drive technology evolves, new products come to market and part numbers change. Seagate Exos is no exception. Part numbers change on average every 2 quarters, with some new part numbers being introduced every 6 months and some old ones being made EOL We have tried to in...

It was almost a year ago when Seagate unveiled the specifications for the Mach.2 drive and planned to launch only SAS drives that would present themselves to the host as 2 LUNs. Since SATA 's specifications do not allow for multiple LUNs, there was no plan to bring a SATA dr...

The two industry giants- Seagate and WD do offer a limited warranty for their hard drives, but this limitation has not been officially mentioned on their websites for years now . We as a partner get a diminished value of the drive with each passing year and often have angry cu...

The Seagate X20 platform is a 5-disc drive with 2 capacities - 18TB and 20TB. The number of SKUs is significantly lower on this platform thanks to Seagate FastFormat, which lets you quickly format a drive to 512e or 4Kn. They ship in 512e format (which is the most popular form...

Western Digital (WD) offer different series of hard drives, each one suited for a specific purpose. WD has colored their drives based on the function each one is optimized for. Currently there are 6 colors, each one representing a product that's made to do something special. ...

What is a self-encrypting drive (SED) A self-encrypting drive (SED) is a drive with a built-in encryption mechanism so that all data written to the drive is automatically encrypted. The encryption hardware is built into the drive, including a processor - you do not need any so...

What is WD ArmorCache In a nutshell - WD ArmorCache is a non-volatile cache in hard drives that improves performance and reduces the risk of data loss associated with traditional DRAM based caching. Traditional solutions - DRAM caching - small, expensive and volatile Traditio...

Back in May, WD announced 22TB and 26TB drives, and these drives are now commercially available in the Middle East .Ultrastar 22TB HC570 drivesHC570 is the 10-disk CMB drive that also uses OptiNand just like the 20TB drive. As with the other Ultrastar drives, it is a 7200 RPM ...

Seagate is transitioning many hard drives from the X16 platform (with 16TB as the highest capacity) to the X18 platform (with 18TB as the highest capacity). 10TB is no exception. The ST10000NM001G of the X16 platform has been discontinued, and the new part number is ST10000NM0...

TLDR :ST16000NM002G belongs to the X16 platform and ST16000NM004J belongs to the newere X18 platform with better transfer rates. Seagate is discontinuing the 16TB drives on the X16 platform, which is understandable since they had 16TB on both the X16 and X18 platforms and that...

The new 3TB Ironwolf ( ST3000VN006) has 2 platters and it will replace the older 3 platter part number ( ST3000VN008). Having one less platter means that ST3000VN006 is lighter and has better engery efficiency ( even if only marginally ).  Transfer rates of new part number ar...

Updated 2023 : Now the ST4000VN008 has completely been phased out and is not available in channel in UAE TL; DR: ST4000VN006 is the newer model with higher cache, higher transfer rate and lower RPM. Both the drives are CMR. What has changed under the hood of ST4000VN006 For ...

WD has introduced another part number for 6TB Purple. We already had WD60PURZ and WD62PURZ and now there is WD63PURZFirst of all , it is a CMR drive like WD60PURZ and WD62PURZ. The WD63PURZ has the largest cache (256 MB). The power consumption is lower on the WD63PURZ, probabl...

RAID 1 is easy to understand. 2 hard drives mirrored to each other. Call it cloning, bit-for-bit copy, exact copy or mirroring, it is easy to visualise. But if you try to apply the same analogy to, say, RAID 5, it defies logic. We have been asked this question so many times th...

WD Ultrastar HC560- 20TB drives are available now, not long after Seagate introduced its 20TB drives.Just like the Ultrastar 18TB, these are 9 platter drives. WD was able to increase the data storage on 9 platters to 20TB without resorting to SMR, but rather with using optiNAN...

TL; DR: ST3000VN006 has higher cache, higher transfer rate and lower RPM. Both ST3000VN006 and ST3000VN007 are CMR . Seagate announced the introduction of a new model on 3TB Ironwolf - ST3000VN006, replaicing the old ST3000VN007. The new model ST3000VN006 is lighter in weight ...

  Seagate announced the launch of its 20TB Ironwolf Pro on December 2. They are the first vendor to announce the availability and specifications of these hard drives. As with the other Ironwolf Pro drives, this drive comes with a 5-year limited warranty with 3 years of data r...