Product Data Sheet

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Drives the Data
Center Architecture
Data center decisions are driven by TCO. Higher capacity hard drives play a leading role
in reducing TCO. An 18TB data center HDD provides 29% more capacity in the same
form factor as a 14TB HDD. Higher capacity HDDs enable data centers to lower CapEx by
reducing supporting hardware and system level costs when compared to lower capacity
drives. Helium-sealed, low power, high reliability drives reduce energy and maintenance
costs, contributing to OpEx savings. For example, a data center using 18TB HDDs vs. 14TB
HDDs requires 22% fewer racks while consuming 21% less power per TB at idle, resulting in
significant overall TCO reduction for data center environments.
Raising the Capacity Bar with New Technologies
Ultrastar DC HC550 integrates a suite of technologies on a 9-disk platform to create a new
class of HDDs. 18TB capacity is achieved by combining technologies that improve areal
density working together with technologies that improve performance and reduce power
consumption.
• The first HDD in the industry to harness Energy-Assisted Magnetic Recording (EAMR)
technology improves writability and therefore increases areal density.
• The industry’s first Triple Stage Actuator (TSA) enhances head-positioning accuracy,
delivering better performance and increased areal density.
• HelioSeal® technology is the foundation for Western Digital’s high capacity HDDs and
this is the 6th generation of HelioSeal product. Western Digital has shipped >65 million
HelioSeal products to date.
Trusted Reliability and Quality for Data at Scale
With its massive capacity and 2.5M MTBF (projected) reliability rating, the Ultrastar DC
HC550 is ideal for object storage implementations. Object storage systems with erasure
coding provide better data durability compared to RAID systems, given their tolerance for
simultaneous error conditions.
The DC HC550 offers security and encryption options to help protect data from
unauthorized use, including SED models in both SATA & SAS. A SED-FIPS will be available in
a SAS configuration.
Trust Western Digital and the Ultrastar DC HC550 hard drive to deliver highest capacity,
lower TCO and more value to your data center.
18/16TB | 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s and SAS 12Gb/s
Highlights
• 18/16TB capacity¹ in a standard 3.5-inch form factor
• CMR technology works with all capacity enterprise
applications & environments
• Reliable, field-proven, 6th generation design
• Industry’s first HDD with Energy-Assisted Magnetic
Recording technology
• Industry’s first Triple Stage Actuator
• HelioSeal® design delivers outstanding power
efficiency
• 2.5M hours (projected) MTBF² rating & 5-year limited
warranty
• Self-Encrypting Drive Options
Applications
• Cloud & Hyperscale storage
• Massive scale-out (MSO), high-density data centers
• Distributed File Systems
• Bulk storage using object storage solutions like
Ceph™ and OpenStack® Swift
• Primary and secondary storage for Apache
Hadoop® for Big Data Analytics
Features and Benefits
Feature / Function Benefits
Capacity • 18/16TB, enabled by EAMR • Provides 29% more capacity than 14TB helium-filled drives
Power Efficiency • Ultra-low Watts per Terabyte (W/TB) • 21% lower idle W/TB than 14TB Ultrastar helium-filled drives
Performance
• Triple Stage Actuator and
Two-Dimensional Magnetic Recording
(TDMR) technology
• Rotational Vibration Safeguard (RVS)
• Media Cache Plus architecture
• SATA 6Gb/s & SAS 12Gb/s
• 512MB cache buffer
• More accurate head positioning, especially in multi-drive environments, for better performance
and data integrity
• Maintains drive performance in high rotational vibration environments and multi-drive systems
• Better random write performance
• Provides compatibility with high-performance data centers
• Improves response time and data management
Reliability
• Dual Safe, RSA-signed firmware
• 2.5M hours MTBF and 0.35% AFR
• 5-year limited warranty
• Retains previous firmware version for safe firmware updates, verified with an RSA signature
• Unsurpassed reliability rating for Capacity Enterprise HDD for fewer failures/less service needs
• Unbeaten for enterprise-class hard drives
Data Security
• Encryption options on both SATA and
SAS models
• Hardware-based encryption helps protect data from unauthorized use (SED options)
* compared to 14TB Ultrastar DC HC530 HDD. Power at idle condition.
29%
MORE CAPACITY*
21%
LOWER
WAT TS/TB*
DATA SHE E T
3.5-INCH HELIUM PLATFORM DATA CENTER HARD DRIVES
Ultrastar
®
DC HC550