Western Digital on Tuesday announced plans to extend its energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording (ePMR) technology to 60TB, thus producing ePMR-based hard drives along with its heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) for several years down the road to guarantee steady availability of high-capacity drives. The company intends to release its 40TB UltraSMR hard drive in the second half of this year, with its HAMR-based counterpart following in 2027. By 2029, Western Digital plans to offer 100TB HAMR-based HDDs.
Western Digital made several important announcements about its short-term, mid-term, and long-term hard disk drive roadmap at its Innovation Day 2026 event on Thursday. The key part of the announcement is that the company will extend usage of its ePMR technology to 60TB hard drives, which means that high-capacity ePMR HDDs will coexist with HAMR drives over the next several years. HAMR HDDs (of unknown capacity) remain on track for mass production in 2027 after getting qualified by Western Digital's hyperscale customers.
