Western Digital is advancing its hard drive roadmap to remain competitive with traditional QLC NAND flash SSDs by introducing a new class of high bandwidth HDDs. The company is combining two core technologies in a conventional multi-platter HDD architecture to substantially increase throughput without sacrificing storage density. The goal is to close the performance gap with QLC SSDs while maintaining the cost and data retention advantages of spinning disks for large scale storage applications.
The first pillar is High Bandwidth Drive Technology, which enables double the I/O bandwidth today, with a path to 8x the current bandwidth in the future. High Bandwidth Drive Technology relies on simultaneous reading and writing from multiple heads on multiple tracks, effectively parallelizing operations across the platters to increase data transfer rates. Western Digital states that this technology is already in customer hands for validation, signaling that the first generation is past the early prototype stage and moving toward broader deployment.
The second innovation is Dual Pivot Technology, which introduces a second set of independent actuators on a separate pivot that will not scarify drive capacity unlike older dual actuator designs. Using Dual Pivot Technology, HDDs can pack more drive platters in a standard 3.5-inch body for higher capacities, and the performance grows by an additional 2x, which is 4x I/O bandwidth compared to today’s drives. According to Western Digital, this architecture will pave the way for 100 TB HDDs, that offer speeds comparable to QLC SSDs, at much better price/performance ratio and better data retention. Drives featuring High Bandwidth Drive Technology are already shipping to customers, while products with Dual Pivot Technology are in development in Western Digital’s labs and are scheduled to become available in 2028, with early customer sampling probably much sooner.
