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Toshiba Successfully Demonstrates Nearline HDDs with Massive Capacity of Over 30 Terabytes
May 2024 by Marc Jacob
Toshiba Electronics Europe GmbH announces that Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation (Toshiba) has successfully achieved storage capacities of over 30TB[1] with two next-generation large capacity magnetic recording technologies for hard disk drives (HDDs): Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) and Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording (MAMR). The demonstration drives represent a major milestone in the advance towards commercial products based on each of these emerging recording formats.
HAMR boosts writing capabilities by locally heating the disk material with a near-field laser. Toshiba achieved 32TB on 10 disks using Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) – a technology that partially overlaps data tracks to increase the areal density and overall storage capacity per disk. Toshiba plans to start shipping test sample HDDs[2] of 28 – 30TB with HAMR technology in 2025.
The other technology is MAMR, which uses microwaves to enhance magnetic recording capabilities. Toshiba was the first [3] to demonstrate its effectiveness and started mass production of first-generation drives in 2021. Toshiba achieved 31TB capacity by stacking 11 disks, using SMR technology, and improving signal processing.
These new achievements were made possible through years of close collaborative work with Resonac Corporation, a HDD media manufacturer, and TDK Corporation, a HDD head manufacturer. Toshiba and its working partners are committed to continue developing both HAMR and MAMR technologies in order to provide higher capacity HDDs to meet the growing storage demand of the cloud and datacenters.
As Larry Martinez-Palomo, Vice President, Head of Storage Products Division at Toshiba, explains: “Toshiba is concurrently advancing the development of future generation high-capacity HDDs using both HAMR and MAMR technologies. Mass production of hard disk drives incorporating HAMR will commence after the validation phase is completed. In the interim, Toshiba will continue to satisfy the demand for high-capacity, high-reliability storage devices with hard disk drives employing the field-proven MAMR technology.”
[1] Definition of capacity: One terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes, but storage capacity actually available may vary, depending on operating environment and formatting. Available storage capacity (including examples of various media files) will vary based on file size, formatting, settings, software and operating system and/or pre-installed software applications, or media content. Actual formatted capacity may vary.
[2] The test sample capacity aims for 28 to 30TB with Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) format.
[3] Toshiba research, as of December 24, 2021
* Information in this document, including product prices and specifications, content of services and contact information, is current and believed to be accurate as of the date of the announcement, but is subject to change without prior notice.
* Company names, product names, and service names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.
