Western Digital has today presented its latest effort to catch up with traditional QLC NAND Flash SSDs by improving its HDD offerings. With the latest High-Bandwidth HDDs, Western Digital has implemented two new technologies in a classical multi-platter HDD design. The first innovation comes in a fo...
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The original was posted on /r/pcmasterrace by /u/Standing_Wave_22 on 2026-02-05 06:04:39+00:00.

FINALLY !!! Someone dared to implement the obvious, wich was HDD’s Achille’s heel for so long.

Not one, but TWO (obvious), but radical changes: * two independent head stacks - so TWO heads per surface. Awesome not just for redundancy but also seek time and performance * multi head R/W capability on within the same stack

This means that HDDs are finally to get WAY better transfer speeds, that are likely finally to saturate at least SATA-3 and later get over 1GB/s and several GB/s.

Only things still missing: * much smarter SMART with advanced diagnostics, like head wobble data, track signal/noise ratio, spindle speed stability etc etc. * RAID5/6 in-drive capability * better DIY servicability, like drive electronics interchangeability

There might be some light in the end of this dark tunnel, crated by AI crowd… 😏