Ultrastar He12 12TB Hard Drive Now Shipping

By Nathan Kirsch

Announced today, the HGST Ultrastar He12 12TB hard drive uses Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) technology in a standard 3.5-inch form factor to push the boundaries of mass data storage. WD said its new 12TB eight-platter HDD was designed to handle workloads of up to 550TB per year and is ready to be the foundation for a worry-free data center. This is WD’s fourth-generation enterprise-class hard drive to be filled with helium (something WD calls HelioSeal) and will be available with either a SAS 12 Gb/s or a SATA III 6 Gb/s interface. HelioSeal technology utilizes helium with 1/7 the density of air, enabling the use of thinner disks, while being able to maintain a stable recording interface.

Both the SATA and SAS models of the Ultrastar He12 12TB HDD have a rotational speed of 7200 RPM, a 256MB data buffer and an average latency time of 4.16 ms. When it comes to sustained transfer rates you are looking at 255 MB/s Read and 243 MB/s Write, which is pretty impressive numbers for a large spinning drive. With regards to power consumption you are looking at 6.1W idle and 9.8W under typical operating situations for the SAS model and 5.3W idle and 7.2W under typical operating situations for the SATA III model.

With up to 12TB of data being stored on one of these drive you will want to be sure that it is reliable and WD says the MTBF is 2.5 million hours and the annual failure rate is 0.35%. WD backs the Ultrastar He12 HDD with a 5-year limited warranty

WD Ultrastar He12 12TB Hard Drive

Ultrastar He12 Helium HDD Features & Specifications

  • HelioSeal: Western Digitals fourth generation, based on exclusive HelioSeal technology, bringing the highest capacity HDD to market much sooner than competing technologies
  • Worlds first 8-disk design, 12TB capacity, available with either 12Gb/s SAS or 6Gb/s SATA interface
  • Data Security: Instant Secure Erase, sanitize and safely redeploy HDDs using the Instant Secure Erase feature
  • SED Features: Help protect end user data with encryption (Self Encrypting Drive)
  • Reliability: Amongst the industrys highest MTBF rating at 2.5M hours

For more information on the He12 12TB drive you can view the drives product page or the press release that went live today. WD declined Legit Reviews’ request to disclose pricing at this time.