Of course, users who have been following the developments of WD in their roadmaps and reveals of larger-scale drive media will be aware that the WD Red Pro 22TB also features a new technological design being rolled out in these bigger drives to merge existing storage technologies into something even better – OptiNAND. This is a new approach to an old idea that never really took off, where the benefits of small areas of faster NAND storage (more typically associated with SSD media) and affords a small area of NAND to a larger scale hard drive to be used for metadata and for storing data in the event of power failure. Flash is also interesting from a persistence standpoint. DRAM gets flushed on power loss, but NAND is non-volatile and can continue to keep metadata information without having to re-hydrate after a boot sequence, be removed from the system for some reason, or any other event where power drops. The WD Red Pro 22TB hard drive (much like other Western Digital 22TB drives currently) arrives with a portion of 64-layer/64GB BICS3 (3D TLC) Our Enterprise Synthetic Workload Analysis includes four profiles based on real-world tasks. These profiles have been developed to make it easier to compare to our past benchmarks, as well as widely-published values such as max 4K read and write speed and 8K 70/30, which is commonly used for enterprise drives. The Seagate Skyhawk AI HDD is designed with “AI'' firmware to improve the drive’s ability to handle recording, video analysis, and GPU analytics workloads. This includes up to 64 HD video streams and 32 AI streams with zero dropped frames. This is combined with a robust warranty, including a high workload rate and Seagate’s three-year data recovery service. Specifically designed for use in enterprise-grade storage systems and data centers, WD Gold HDDs are broadly compatible with major enterprise operating systems. Testing the WD Red Pro 22TB is going to be performed across multiple methods, but still rather unconventional. This drive is designed for deployment in 8+ Bay servers and higher and although I have several NAS in the studio that could accommodate this frequency of drives, I do not have multiple WD Red Pro 22TB units. Therefore the testing I have conducted are all examples of single-drive performance. These will include several PC testing sessions using popular and recommended storage testing applications and two NAS tests involving Synology and QNAP.

Finally, I conducted a straightforward transfer onto the HDD using Windows File Explorer. This was done with a folder filled with a little over 22.8GB of mixed file types and volumes (2,282 files across 72 folders). This transfer took a fraction over 2 mins 20 secs (5 sec margin of error): The design of the WD Red Pro 22TB Hard drive is quite uniform when compared to the 16TB, 18TB and 20TB versions of the same drive. The green PCB seemed the tiniest pinch thinner and less pronounced in this drive – likely due to every single millimetre counting in efforts to ensure that the drive is still a standard sized 3.5″ class HDD. Indeed, the newest generation of hard drives (i.e ones that use larger numbers of platters and helium sealing) tend to be considerably more solid and industrial in appearance than ever.The company's publicly available roadmap indicates that Seagate intends to deliver 50+ TB hard drives in calendar 2026, so the HDD maker has plenty of time to polish off its 50TB media for mass production. 22TB and 24TB HDDs Due Shortly WD Gold drives are available in capacities up to 24TB utilizing the OptiNAND technology's capacity-enabling feature. For hyperscalers, CSPs, co-location and enterprises, scaling efficiently and cost-effectively to meet data growth in a manner that is sustainable and environmentally friendly is paramount to their success. We are working closely with a few strategic, large-scale customers to help define what archival storage may look like. Most systems default to WCE, which can increase host/software overhead if there’s a need to ensure data integrity, and the risk of critical data loss is a significant factor to consider as well. While only 128MB of iNAND is reserved for power loss metadata, user data in DRAM is also protected as it can be written to flash during sudden power loss with the use of the remaining rotational energy of the spinning disks. ArmorCache can also be disabled in WCE mode for specific environments if desired.

If you want to have a PCIe drive instead, expect to pay a significant premium although the difference in speed will be one magnitude higher thanks to the use of PCIe Gen 4 protocol. Other 8TB SSDs include We also test power consumption and temperature. Power consumption will vary with drive performance, RPM, and more, and it’s important to look at four different cases: maximum power draw, average power draw, idle power draw, and workload efficiency. Power usage can add up with multiple drives. Temperature is also an important metric for hard drives, as overheating is a common cause of failure, particularly during sustained workloads. If you install an HDD or SSD inside a Synology system with the latest version of their software platform DSM, but the HDD in question is not on the compatibility list, you are greeted by a message that will detail that the drive is not recommended in the storage manager. Hard disk drives are cheap and offer plenty of capacity but they are bound to disappear in a not-so-distant future. Right now, the biggest portable hard disk drive has a capacity of 5TB; it uses a special drive that is slightly bigger than a standard laptop HDD which has a width of 2.5-inch and a height of 7mm. The two biggest hard disk drive vendors have released 22TB hard drives with Western Digital unveiling a 26TB model in 2022 (although you won't be able to buy it as it is a data center only product). Toshiba has a 20TB CMR Hard disk drive but no plans for a 22TB one yet.While many think that SSDs are the better storage option, HDDs still have a lot of life left and truth be told, power the cloud. Tossing 100 of these drives in a JBOD for instance will show some pretty impressive performance (roughly 30GB/s). As a result, the WD Gold 22TB HDDs are ideal for MSPs, cloud providers, and enterprises that need to have a massive amount of data conveniently available. The most common use for hard drives, though, is simple file transfers. Our DiskBench test estimates transfer performance with a real-world workload that is useful for calculating how long a transfer could take. Hard drives have consistent performance and will hit their maximum sustained speed at QD1 with large enough I/O, which is illustrated in our ATTO benchmark results. This is particularly useful for showing differences in technology and capacity as drives get bigger and faster. Now, before I move on to the NAS testing. It is worth highlighting a couple of important factors with regard to the WD Red Pro 22TB and the support available from each NAS brand I am focusing on for the testing. Now, Synology is the ONLY NAS brand in the market that also has its own first-party HDDs available to users too. These are Originally Toshiba Enterprise-grade produced hard disks that have had a Synology-specific firmware applied to them. Now, why is this relevant? Well, because some larger-scale Synology products in 2022 onwards do not list other 3rd Party HDDs as compatible. Even then, if you look up some of the older 2020 released NAS drives currently in the market (such as the DS920+ for example), they DO list HDDs from the likes of Western Digital (and their WD Red, Ultrastar and Gold series) BUT they do not list drives larger than 18TB at the time of writing. This is an odd stance by the brand, when larger-scale 20TB and 22TB hard drives are available in the market and designed for NAS. The right choice depends on various factors, including what you intend to store and transfer, and the volume of data involved. Whether you're upgrading your laptop's hard drive or equipping a network-attached storage (NAS) device with a high-speed option, understanding the nuances of different drives is crucial.

And here is how the WD Red Pro 22TB sounds when the HDD is being HEAVILY accessed. using a benchmarking tool and extensive random 4K IOPS in read/write testing. Note, the higher the frequency of files, the noisier it will be, as the actuator inside will be working considerably hardware to allocate the small size/high frequency of data to the platters): With average latency at 8K 70/30, the 22TB Gold model saw great overall results again; it posted 0.27ms through 9.51ms in SMB, while the 12TB Ultrastar recorded a range of 0.23ms through 13.62ms. Overall, the WD Gold 22TB HDDs aren’t trying to break a ton of new ground, they don’t really need to. Data availability is the name of the game for HDDs, but the 22TB Golds do offer a good performance profile as well. The WD Gold 22TB HDDs should find plenty of practicality for any application where data density and availability are the primary factors. Nevertheless, you can still push through this warning and proceed to testing the performance of the WD Red Pro 22TB HDD from within the Synology Storage Manager. Here was the results.

ArmorCache is the standout enterprise feature.

WD Gold drives have sophisticated monitoring electronics that help correct linear and rotational vibrations in real time using enhanced vibration protection technology for improved performance in high-vibration environments. For standard deviation, the WD Gold hit 1.853ms read and 27.13ms write, while the Ultrastar recorded reads and writes of 2.114ms and 9.76ms, respectively. The new 22TB CMR/PMR and 24TB SMR HDDs will serve as the company's top-of-the-line workhorses that will replace 20TB CMR/PMR and 22TB SMR hard drives from this position. With up to 2.5M hours MTBF 3, WD Gold hard drives deliver enhanced levels of dependability and durability. Improved metadata efficiency is only part of what OptiNAND can provide. Using some of the flash, 128MB, to store data from DRAM during emergency power off (EPO) can improve drive performance without a corresponding risk of data loss. This is the crux of the ArmorCache feature. With ArmorCache and the write cache disabled (WCD), which has no data loss risk by nature, random write IOPS can reach the same level as write cache enabled (WCE) mode on normal drives. At the same time, data is safe from power loss if the drive is used in the WCE mode. This is of significant value for some use cases.

For our first test, which measures throughput, the WD Gold had a range of 14,333 IOPS to 26,882 IOPS in SMB while 12TB WD Ultrastar posted a range of 16,872 IOPS to 18,789 IOPS. WD states that OptiNAND drives can secure more than 100MB of write cache data in the event of an unplanned power loss, a 50X improvement over standard drives that can flush about 2MB. Hybrid Drive media is not new, but whereas older generation hybrid drives were more parallel in architecture, this is far more intertwined. It also brings enhancements to the firmware algorithm and system-on-a-chip (SoC). Once again, to be clear, OptiNAND and its iNAND isn’t flash cache (such as the 512MB this drive also features). Rather, it’s a portion of flash memory used to store metadata–or data about existing data–so they can be managed more efficiently. One common question is, " Is an SSD a hard drive?" While many might call an SSD (Solid State Drive) a hard drive out of habit, an SSD is quite different from a traditional HDD (Hard Disk Drive) with spinning platters in terms of design and performance. Without going too deep into the ' SSD vs HDD' debate, in essense, SSDs offer faster data access and are more durable due to the absence of moving parts, but typically have lower maximum storage capacities than HDDs and are more expensive. For instance, finding an SSD over 8TB can be challenging, while HDDs, while slower, can have capacities of 20TB or even more.Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test. Our next benchmark subjects the drives to 100% read and write activity at 8K sequential throughput. Here, the 22TB WD Gold drive posted 109,454 IOPS read and 105,577 IOPS write in SMB, while the WD Ultrastar hit 108,655 IOPS read and 104,077 IOPS write in iSCSI. The next test was using ATTO disk benchmark and this one was using a 1GB and 4GB test file in the same windows PC test environment. However, this test was focused more on the IOPS. The random 4K operations of a hard drive will typically be hugely dwarfed by those of HDDs, but enterprise HDDs and pro series drives still tend to rate noticeably higher than domestic HDD and standard class NAS HDDs on this score.