Toshiba’s hard disc drive lines received a big boost this week, with the company announcing an ambitious five-year projection. With nearline applications, the business expects a bigger increase in HDDs. Toshiba intends to use next-generation recording technology while increasing the number of platters on each new hard disc drive. Their first new initiative will be the unveiling of a 26 T.B. drive before the conclusion of the fiscal year 2022. By 2027, the business plans to release HDDs with a capacity of 40 terabytes or more.
Toshiba had a few alternatives when it came to increasing the capacity of its hard drives. The first alternative is to employ platters with a higher recording density over a larger area. Another alternative is to add more platters to an existing HDD. Toshiba currently sells an 18TB hard drive with nine aluminium platters that use flux-control microwave-assisted magnetic recording technology (FC-MAMR).
Toshiba’s next project will be a 20TB HDD that uses FC-MAMR discs and can efficiently use up to ten discs to boost capacity. This move will put the company in direct competition with other high-capacity HDD makers such as Western Digital and Seagate.
Toshiba’s 20TB HDD will be critical since it will allow the business to test out its 10-platter helium-filled platform. According to Tom’s Hardware, this technology is not a technological breakthrough in any way. This partnership, on the other hand, will enable Toshiba to build higher-capacity HDDs at a faster rate than before.
Beginning in March 2023, the business will introduce its 10-platter 26TB HDD, which will move from helium-filled to microwave-assisted switching MAMR technology, also known as MAS-MAMR, allowing Showa Denko K.K. platters and TDK heads to be used. Toshiba’s next step will be an 11-platter 30 T.B. drive, which will be unveiled in March 2025.
Toshiba, on the other hand, sees heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology as a way to boost long-term development for HDDs, starting with storage capacity ranging from 30 to 35 terabytes. According to the business, HAMR technology will allow it to build hard drives with capacities greater than 40 terabytes in the next five years.
Toshiba will be required by MAS-MAMR to design new platters with newer magnetic layers and new read/write heads. Furthermore, HAMR will require Toshiba to develop and evolve a new batch of critical components, necessitating the use of collaborative technologies to achieve its objectives. After Toshiba implements HAMR into its drives, it will continue to employ MAS-MAMR. The corporation will do so since combining numerous technology concepts can result in greater dangers. Instead, they’ll try to tread carefully, adhering to older technologies while promoting cutting-edge concepts.
Toshiba continues to work closely with the cloud companies to understand their exact capacity and performance requirements, and the ability to utilize our next-generation technologies will be key to meeting our customers’ needs. Many years of close collaboration work with our key component suppliers are leading to impactful technology breakthroughs to achieve higher capacities, which ultimately reduces TCO (total cost of ownership) of our nearline HDDs.
— Raghu Gururangan, Vice President of Engineering & Product Marketing, Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc.
Toshiba has not announced if consumer-level versions of the MAS-MAMR or HAMR technologies would be developed due to their concentration on nearline applications with businesses.
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