Toshiba has announced plans to bring more than 30 TB hard drives to the commercial market by 2025.
The large capacities are made possible by two magnetic recording technologies: Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) and Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording (MAMR).
HAMR technology significantly improves writing capabilities by heating the disc material with a near-field laser. HAMR does face criticism, with questions about the technology’s readiness, quality, reliability, and compatibility, but all major drive manufacturers are adopting it, and Seagate recently announced the results of an experimental test running one of its Mozaic 3+ HAMR-equipped drives continuously and without problems for more than 6,000 hours.
Yo MAMR!
By using HAMR, coupled with Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR), which increases storage capacity through overlapping data tracks, Toshiba was able to successfully achieve a disk capacity of 32TB on 10 x 3TB platters.
The second technology, MAMR, uses microwaves to increase magnetic recording power. Toshiba pioneered this technology and began mass-producing the first generation of drives in 2021. With the combination of SMR technology, improved signal processing and stacking 11 platters, the company says it has achieved a capacity of 31 TB.
Larry Martinez-Palomo, vice president and head of Toshiba’s Storage Products Division, said: “Toshiba is simultaneously advancing the development of future-generation high-capacity HDDs utilizing both HAMR and MAMR technologies. The mass production of hard drives with HAMR will begin after validation. In the meantime, Toshiba will continue to meet the demand for high-capacity, high-reliability storage devices with hard drives using field-proven MAMR technology.”
Toshiba expects to start shipping test HAMR HDDs in 2025, with capacities ranging from 28 to 30 TB.