0B36047 Western Digital 6TB 7.2K RPM SAS 12GBPS 3.5 Inch HDD

High-Capacity Enterprise Hard Drive Overview

The Western Digital 0B36047 Ultrastar DC HC310 6TB SAS hard drive is a reliable, enterprise-grade storage solution designed for data centers, servers, and mission-critical workloads. Built for durability and consistent performance, this 3.5-inch HDD delivers high speed, large capacity, and long-term dependability.

Manufacturer & Product Details

• Brand: Western Digital (Manufactured for Dell systems)
• Model Number: 0B36047
• Product Category: Internal Hard Disk Drive
• Product Line: Ultrastar
• Series: DC HC310

Storage & Interface Specifications

• Total Storage Capacity: 6TB
• Interface Type: SAS 12Gbps
• Form Factor: 3.5-inch internal drive
• Load/Unload Cycles: Up to 600,000
• Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF): 2 million hours

Performance & Speed Capabilities

• Maximum Interface Transfer Rate: 1200 Mbps
• Typical Sustained Data Rate: 255 Mbps
• Spindle Speed: 7200 RPM
• Cache Memory: 256MB buffer
• Average Latency: 4.16 ms

Seek Time Performance

• Average Read Seek Time: 8.0 ms
• Average Write Seek Time: 8.6 ms

Physical Dimensions & Build

• Z-Height: 26.1 mm
• Dimensions (W × D): 101.6 mm (±0.25) × 147 mm
• Approximate Weight: 715 g

Core Technology and Architectural Design

The Western Digital 0B36047 Ultrastar DC HC310 is built upon a legacy of innovation, incorporating technologies that directly impact performance longevity and data integrity. Understanding its architecture is key to deploying it effectively within your storage ecosystem.

HelioSeal Technology: The Foundation of Efficiency

Western Digital 0B36047 proprietary HelioSeal process is a game-changer for high-capacity drives. It involves hermetically sealing the drive's internal environment with helium instead of traditional air.

Operational Benefits of Helium

The use of helium, a gas less dense than air, results in significantly reduced aerodynamic drag on the spinning disk platters. This translates into multiple, tangible advantages for data center operation.

Reduced Power Consumption

The drive requires less torque to maintain 7.2K RPM, lowering operational power draw per terabyte—a critical metric for Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) in large-scale deployments.

Increased Areal Density and Capacity

With reduced turbulence, manufacturers can place more platters and read/write heads in a standard 3.5-inch form factor, enabling the high capacities of the HC310 series efficiently.

Enhanced Thermal Performance

Helium conducts heat more efficiently than air, allowing for better dissipation of operational heat and contributing to overall system stability and component longevity.

Energy-Assisted Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (ePMR)

To achieve high data densities while maintaining signal integrity, this drive utilizes ePMR. This technology adds a precise energy boost to the recording process, enabling stronger, more stable magnetic transitions on the disk media. This results in higher data integrity at increased areal densities and improved write performance reliability, ensuring your data is written correctly the first time and remains readable over the drive's extended lifespan.

Interface and Performance Specifications Deep Dive

The Western Digital 0B36047 specifications of this drive—SAS 12Gbps, 6TB, 7.2K RPM—tell a story of targeted performance. Let's decode what these numbers mean for real-world applications.

SAS 12Gbps: The Enterprise-Grade Interconnect

The Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interface is the gold standard for enterprise storage, offering advantages over SATA that are crucial in multi-drive environments.

Full Duplex Communication

Unlike SATA's half-duplex design, SAS supports simultaneous read and write operations across the data lanes, effectively doubling the potential bandwidth for mixed workloads.

Enhanced Error Recovery and Integrity

SAS features more robust error reporting and correction protocols, ensuring data integrity is maintained even in complex storage topologies.

Dual-Port Capability

A key feature for high-availability systems. The drive presents two independent physical ports, allowing it to be connected to two different host controllers simultaneously. This enables multipath I/O and failover configurations, eliminating single points of failure at the drive level.

Backward Compatibility

The 12Gbps interface is fully backward compatible with 6Gbps SAS infrastructures, allowing for seamless integration into existing server backplanes and controllers.

Performance Profile: 7.2K RPM and 256MB Cache

The 7.2K RPM spindle speed positions this drive optimally within the performance-density curve.

Sequential Throughput

Leveraging the 12Gbps SAS interface and high-density platters, the drive delivers sustained sequential transfer rates suitable for data warehousing, video streaming archives, and large backup targets.

Random I/O Performance (IOPS)

The combination of RPM, advanced firmware algorithms, and a large 256MB DRAM cache ensures strong random read/write performance. This makes it a viable candidate for active tier-2 storage, virtualization hosts (for less frequently accessed VMs or templates), and content delivery networks where a mix of file sizes is common.

Workload Optimization and Target Applications

The Western Digital 0B36047 Ultrastar DC HC310 6TB is not a niche product; it's a versatile workhorse designed for specific, demanding use cases. Its specifications align perfectly with several key enterprise scenarios.

Cloud and Hyperscale Data Center Storage

In scale-out storage architectures, consistency, density, and power efficiency are king. The HC310's HelioSeal design delivers lower watts/TB, while its SAS reliability ensures consistent performance in dense JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) or storage server configurations, handling object storage, cold/ warm cloud storage tiers, and scale-out file systems.

Enterprise Server and Storage Arrays

For medium to large businesses running on-premises infrastructure, this drive serves as dependable primary storage.

Network-Attached Storage (NAS) Optimized

Its support for extended error correction and high MTBF makes it an excellent choice for business-critical NAS systems supporting file sharing, collaborative projects, and departmental archives.

Direct-Attached Storage (DAS) and SANs

In dedicated storage arrays and servers, the dual-port SAS capability is fully utilized for RAID configurations (RAID 5, 6, 10, 50, 60), database hosting (for historical data or reporting instances), and email server storage pools.

Video Surveillance and Security Infrastructure

The always-on, continuous write nature of modern IP video surveillance systems demands storage built for endurance. The HC310 is engineered for 24/7 operation with workloads rated for 550TB/year, making it capable of handling multiple high-resolution video streams simultaneously without dropping frames, ensuring critical security footage is always recorded.

Enterprise Reliability, Endurance, and Data Integrity

Beyond raw performance, enterprise drives are defined by their resilience. Western Digital builds the Ultrastar line to the highest standards, incorporating features that guard against data loss and maximize uptime.

Rated Workload and Annualized Failure Rate (AFR)

This drive is rated for 550TB of host writes per year, translating to a heavy, sustained write workload far exceeding typical consumer drives. It boasts an industry-leading 2.5 million hour Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) and a low Annualized Failure Rate (AFR), providing the statistical reliability needed for predictive maintenance and cluster planning.

Advanced Format (4K Native Sector) Technology

All modern high-capacity drives use 4K native sectors (4096 bytes) instead of the legacy 512-byte sectors. This improves format efficiency, increases ECC strength for each sector, and enhances reliability. The drive provides emulation for backward compatibility with older systems that expect 512-byte sectors.

Comprehensive Protection Suite

Western Digital 0B36047 integrates multiple layers of protection to safeguard data:

Vibration Protection

Multi-axis shock sensors and firmware algorithms compensate for vibration in multi-drive systems, preventing performance degradation and potential errors caused by neighboring drives.

Power Management

Enhanced power-loss circuitry helps protect data in transit during an unexpected power outage, ensuring writes in the cache are managed correctly to prevent corruption.