Western Digital appears to have kept the promise it made late last year: a 12TB hard drive.
The new album is released under the HGST trademark of Western Digital, which is more business-oriented. The hard drive is called HGST Ultrastar He12, and is one of the company's drives containing sun. 
The last record of this series has 10TB capacity and the next one to be built will have 14TB storage space.
The version of 12TB has eight plates with an average data density of 864Gbits / square inch. They turn to 7200RPM and come in SATA and SAS versions (mainly used on servers).
Again, we mention that the HGST series is focused on business products and that SAS versions have a 12Gbps data rate twice as fast as SATA3.
As for the sun, it may sound like a marketing trick, but it really makes the difference when you have so many moving parts on a hard drive.
According to Western Digital, the lower density of the sun (one-seventh of the density of air) reduces friction and vibration. This makes possible a high density design with eight plates.
From a technical point of view, the sun could be used to use fewer plates spinning at higher speeds, but that would be competitive for SSDs.
The 12TB HGST Ultrastar He12 hard drive includes Instant Secure Erase (ISE) and Drive Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) support and comes with a 5 year warranty. The company reports that the annual failure rate is only 0,35 percent, so it's unlikely to use the warranty.
WD has not given a date on the release of the hard drive, but it confirms that the new 12TB drives are directed to the distributors. There is currently no price information, but we can say that 10TB hard drives are available at retail for 500 dollars.
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