WD presents High Bandwidth Drives, 100TB by 2029, industry’s first dual pivot tech
Today WD announced two things: High Bandwidth Drives and Dual Pivot technology. The latter is explained as a set of second independently controlled actuators on a separate pivot inside a 3.5-inch drive. WD says this can deliver up to 2x sequential I/O versus a conventional HDD. WD also says the design avoids the usual downsides tied to older dual actuator approaches, including lost capacity and customer software changes.
Dual Pivot is meant to pair with “High Bandwidth Drive” technology. WD says it can read and write from multiple heads on multiple tracks at the same time. WD claims up to 2x bandwidth today, and a longer path to 8x. These two technologies together can raise sequential I/O by up to 4x as drive capacities increase.
Source: WD Storage
A PC Watch report goes beyond that timeline and talks about longer-term scaling targets, such as up to 10TB per platter and up to 14 platters per drive. That points to 140TB, but it reads like a ceiling target, not a 2029 product promise.
Source: WD Storage
WD says the 40TB UltraSMR ePMR HDD is in qualification with two hyperscale customers, with volume production planned for the second half of 2026.
Enough for 50 entire COD franchise installations
By 2029, WD still bases its roadmap on HAMR (Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording) reaching 100TB. I remember this story from The Gamer that calculated all Call of Duty games at 1.5TB, since that story was posted, we’ve had two COD releases. So a rough estimate puts that at least 2TB for all PC COD games. In other words, that would be enough to store all COD games 50 times (give or take). Not that anyone should.
Source: PCWatch , TechPowerUP
