Something to look forward to: When Western Digital revealed its 20TB difficult drive and new storage architecture earlier this year, information technology hadn't provided a concrete date or cost for full general availability. Now the drives appear to exist on sale, though for a hefty price tag and however without a precise shipping date.

Western Digital first unveiled its 20TB enterprise-oriented hard drive with new OptiNAND technology at the stop of August. OptiNAND uses embedded flash retentiveness to store drive metadata, which Western Digital says allows for more storage and speeds up access to information. The company said information technology was sampling the new drives to select customers first while planning a wider release subsequently in the twelvemonth.

Now, the WD Gilt 20TB hard drive with OptiNAND is available on Western Digital's online shop for around $680. The store page still doesn't give a release appointment, just information technology pegs availability at ane-to-two weeks. The checkout page also shows shipping equally i-to-2 weeks. It's unclear if that indicates the date range within which it plans to release the 20TB hard bulldoze or if it has already sold out and new stock won't exist in for another couple of weeks. So far, Western Digital hasn't made the 20TB hard drive available at any other retailer. The website as well lists a 20TB Ultrastar hard drive merely has no details on toll or availability.

Seagate already shipped 20TB difficult drives using HAMR technology final year. Both companies promise to have 30TB difficult drives in the second one-half of this decade (second-generation HAMR in the instance of Seagate), and Seagate plans to become to 100TB by 2030.