Western Digital has unveiled the world’s first 14TB enterprise-class hard drive featuring host-managed shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology, HGST-branded Ultrastar Hs14. The new drive delivers 40 percent more capacity and more than twice the sequential write performance of its SMR predecessor, enabling more economical and efficient capture of the growing volume and variety of data.

With the announcement of the new drive, Western Digital is gearing up to combat the big data challenge by delivering unprecedented capacity as well as online watt/TB power efficiency for extremely low total cost of ownership (TCO). The focus on total cost of ownership includes capacity per rack, power consumption, cooling, maintenance, and acquisition cost.  The drives harness two core complimentary technologies, fourth generation HelioSeal technology, and second generation host-managed SMR. Utilizing SMR technology, the drive offers a 16 percent increase in capacity while keeping highly predictable, highly reliable performance.

The Ultrastar Hs14 enterprise hard drive is currently sampling to select OEMs and comes with a five year limited warranty. Pricing on the drives has not been announced yet.