Toshiba Successfully Demonstrates Nearline HDDs with Massive Capacity of Over 30TB

[btarunr]

Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation (Toshiba) has successfully achieved storage capacities of over 30 TB with two next-generation large capacity 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 toward commercial products based on each of these emerging recording formats.

HAMR, one of the two technologies that are driving forward next-generation high-capacity data recording, boosts magnetic recording capabilities by locally heating the disk with near-field light. Toshiba achieved 32 TB on 10 disks and adoption of Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) technology. Toshiba plans to start shipping test sample HDDs with HAMR technology in 2025.



The other technology is MAMR, which uses microwaves to enhance magnetic recording capabilities. Toshiba was the first to demonstrate its effectiveness and started mass production of first-generation drives in 2021. Toshiba achieved 31 TB by stacking 11 disks, utilizing 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.

A technical lecture detailing the demonstration will be presented at the IDEMA Symposium scheduled for May 16.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Blurpy]

Hope they don't try to market these outside the data center, we don't need another western digital.

 

[Bwaze]

Why not? We're getting stellar increases in SSD capacities? Some manufacturers even released product lines that end at 2 TB instead of previous 4 TB - so we wouldn't notice the price increase too much!

Shingled HDD drives have of course many downsides compared to standard CMR drives, and only one upside - capacity. But if sold as such, and reviews paint a clear picture what you're getting they have their uses even for home users.

 

[Bagerklestyne]

Seagate are already in this arena with HAMR drives.

We definitely need as much competition as we can get to get drive prices going down.

 

[qlum]

SMR should not be too terrible, if it is transparent to the filesystem. Sneaking in smr on existing drives was what caused the problems.

 

[kondamin]

How much power do these things use

 

[Veseleil]

Using their P300 drives for years on my desktop. One in use more than 6 years, perfect condition, the other is couple of years old. SMR tech, pretty fast, loud.

What I would like to know is the difference in durability between the two (HAMR and MAMR).

Edit: Whoops, it seems they're (P300) actually CMR.

 

[L'Eliminateur]

so that comes out to 3.2TB per platter using every trick(and every bad trick like SMR)) in the book they could throw at it... whilst it looks impressive it's kind of disappointing, we've had 1TB per platter with PMR HDDs more than 15yr ago.

Not only they're not even in production they're just demonstration drives but they even plan to deliver TEST SAMPLES next year, if it's a disappointment now... in 2025 even more

 

[Veseleil]

so that comes out to 3.2TB per platter using every trick(and every bad trick like SMR)) in the book they could throw at it... whilst it looks impressive it's kind of disappointing, we've had 1TB per platter with PMR HDDs more than 15yr ago.

Not only they're not even in production they're just demonstration drives but they even plan to deliver TEST SAMPLES next year, if it's a disappointment now... in 2025 even more

I could agree on most. But they're at least trying their best here, innovating. And while being the smallest player in the field, don't forget that. It seems that we've reached the capacity limits with CMR, so SMR might be the forced tradeoff.

 

[Snoop05]

SMR should not be too terrible, if it is transparent to the filesystem. Sneaking in smr on existing drives was what caused the problems.

"transparent" would mean the filesystem on such drive is not aware of the drive being SMR, also known as DM-SMR (Device Manged) which is exactly what makes it absolutely ass and for the most part ends up in consumer market.
When OS/filesystem is aware and in charge of how stuff is done aka HM-SMR (Host Managed) stuff starts being not as shit, which for the most part are drives for enterprise market.