Western Digital Ultrastar and Gold 16 TB and 18 TB drive availability spreads

[Redaktion]

Western Digital's largest 16 TB and 18 TB Ultrastar and WD Gold drives can now be sold to smaller customers, including system integrators and those that service small/medium business. Could start to appear in pro-grade NAS equipment.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Western-Digital-Ultrastar-and-Gold-16-TB-and-18-TB-drive-availability-spreads.480826.0.html

[S.Yu]

The $/GB metric isn't really falling at all lately so that's definitely gonna further affect uptake in a shrinking market, and off the shelf NAS should mean a further (meaningless) premium over the drive.

[Craig Ward]

That's right, S.Yu. At the smaller end, the argument for an HDD over an SSD is a difficult one to make now with the increase in cost being a small part of the overall build budget. At the upper end, the value tied up in a single high-capacity drive is prohibitive.

Last time I checked, the sweet spot was around 6-8 TB for good capacity vs $/TB vs keeping each unit affordable. Around 4 TB was generally where the $/TB were best.