WD Ultrastar DC HC560 - 3.5" Enterprise HDD - 20TB SAS SE
WD Ultrastar DC HC560 - 3.5" Enterprise HDD Variants
About WD Ultrastar DC HC560 - 3.5" Enterprise HDD
The Ultrastar DC HC560 is a 20TB enterprise hard drive and WD's 7th-generation HelioSeal platform. It was the first Ultrastar to use OptiNAND, which pairs an embedded iNAND flash chip with the HDD controller to improve metadata handling and error recovery without using the flash for user data caching.
Enterprise Specs
7,200 RPM, 512MB cache, ePMR (energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording) with CMR, available in SATA 6Gb/s and SAS 12Gb/s. Workload rating is 550TB/year with a 2.5 million hour MTBF and 5-year warranty. Helium-sealed, 9-disk design with 2.2TB per platter. Available in both 4Kn and 512e sector formats.
Sustained transfer rate is 291 MB/s. Idle power is 6.1W on SATA SED models (5.8W on Base SE), giving a power efficiency of about 0.31 W/TB.
OptiNAND
OptiNAND stores expanded metadata (track and cylinder maps, repeatable runout tables) on the embedded flash rather than the platters. This frees up platter space for user data and improves emergency power-off recovery since the drive can flush critical metadata to flash faster than to the spinning media. It does not function as a read/write cache for user data.
Drive Security Variants
The last character of the model number indicates the security mode:
- SE (Base) -- No encryption, sanitize overwrite only. Available on both SATA and SAS. SATA models include ATA Security Feature Set as standard.
- SED (Self-Encrypting Drive) -- Hardware AES-256 encryption with TCG Enterprise protocol. Available on both SATA and SAS.
Starting with the HC560, WD dropped the ISE and SED-FIPS variants that were offered on earlier Ultrastar generations (HC520-HC550).
Homelab Relevance
The HC560 sits at 20TB, which is a less common capacity point on the used market compared to the 18TB HC550 or 22TB HC570. Availability and pricing depend on which datacenter refresh cycles are happening at any given time. If the price per terabyte is competitive with the HC550, it is the better drive. If used HC550 18TB units are significantly cheaper per TB, the older platform is still perfectly reliable.
Best for: NAS builds where 20TB per slot fits the capacity plan and used pricing is competitive.
Avoid if: You can get better per-TB pricing on the HC550 (18TB) or HC570 (22TB).
Market Offers
| Merchant | Condition | Availability | Last Checked | Offer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CDW | New | Out of Stock | 1h ago | — |
| Amazon US | New | Out of Stock | 9m ago | — |
| Western Digital | New | Out of Stock | 4h ago | — |
Prices are not shown for listings out of stock more than 7 days.
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