Western Digital Ultrastar DC HC560 20TB HDD Review

Rating: 8.0.

WD's 20TB Ultrastar DC HC560 aims to meet the storage needs of hyperscale cloud data centres and is the first drive to feature WD's OptiNAND and ePMR (Energy-Assisted Perpendicular Magnetic Recording) technologies. We put this drive through its paces and see what is on offer for the £400 asking price.

The 20TB DC HC560 uses nine 2.2TB discs, (each with an areal density of 1,131 Gbits/sq².) to reach its capacity, along with eighteen heads. It has a spindle speed of 7,200rpm, a 4.16ms average latency and has an impressive 512MB of cache. WD quote a maximum sustained transfer rate of 269MB/s for the drive.

At the time of writing this review, there are two versions of the DC HC560, the standard version we are looking at here (WUH722020ALE6L4) and a SED (Self Encrypting Drive) version (WUH722020ALE6L1).

The official power consumption figures for the drive are 7W when operating and 6W when idle.

WD quote a workload figure of up to 550TB/year for the DC H560 and back it with a 5-year warranty.

Physical Specifications:

• Usable Capacities: 20TB.
• Spindle Speed: 7,200rpm.
• No. Of Heads: 18.
• No. Of Platters: 9.
• Cache: 512MB.
• Recording Method: ePMR (Energy-Assisted Perpendicular Magnetic Recording).
• Interface: Serial ATA (SATA) 6Gb/s (SATA III)
• Form Factor: 3.5in.
• Dimensions: 26.1 x 101.6 x 147mm,
• Drive Weight: 690g.

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