Western Digital and Dropbox signed a partnership agreement for the use of disks Ultrastar DC HC650 20 To. The latter use system-managed SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) technology.

What are the different technologies used in hard drives?

The 2 most used technologies are PMR and SMR. THE PMR where the Vertical Magnetic Recording it has been used since 2005 to replace LMR (Longitudinal Magnetic Recording). This PMR technology allows higher density, i.e. 1 TB per disk. It is also known by the term CMR ou Classical Magnetic Recording.

The SMR where the Pebble magnetic recording meanwhile it was created around 2013 by Western Digital. It consists of shingles recording, thus allowing for greater density and therefore greater capacity. However, read and write speeds are slower. So, for access that requires high transfer speed, you can go for PMR. On the other hand, SMR should be chosen for high volume storage that does not require high read/write rates.

Why Dropbox chooses SMR technology drives?

SMR discs are less efficient than PMR discs. On the other hand, in data centers, these disks can be controlled by the system or directly by disk controllers that can partially correct the limitations of this technology. These DC HC650 drives benefit in every case from the implementation of an Energy Assisted Recording (EAMR) technique, 5th generation HelioSeal technology with the first 3-stage actuator. In addition, Western Digital’s SMR drives are a part Zoned storagean open source platform launched to guarantee the scalability of SMR drives to ZNS SSDs if necessary.

Actually, Dropbox they are mainly looking for storage and archiving disks. Data is actually written only once to the hard disk and is archived without being modified infrequently. In addition, only Western Digital SMR DC HC650 drives offer the largest capacity on the market: 20 TB. This enables significant efficiency per square meter in storage centers. Therefore, these reasons justify Dropbox’s choice to choose the DC HC650.

A long partnership between Dropbox and Western Digital

It’s also a logical continuation of a long-standing partnership between Western Digital and Dropbox. Indeed, according to Andrew Fong, VP of Engineering at Dropbox, Western digital has supported Dropbox since the development phases of the storage platforms. Confirms that Western Digital is an essential strategic partner for Dropbox, enabling it to continuously improve cloud infrastructure. Andrew Dorian, Vice President of Enterprise Hard Drives at Western Digital, said Western Digital is excited to support Dropbox to keep pace with customers’ growing demands in the cloud space.

The DC HC650 hard drive is the first to offer 20 TB capacity at the market. Other Companies will surely study its various advantages and follow Dropbox.