- Toshiba is paving the way for hard drives from 24 TB to 55 TB and beyond
- The storage giant plans to use 40TB drives as soon as next year with new technologies
- Twelve-platter design underpins Toshiba's push for higher capacity
Toshiba has laid out plans to expand hard drive capacity far beyond today's limits, with new slides showing the way to 40TB models and eventually 55TB and beyond.
PC watch The company detailed its roadmap at a recent symposium in Japan, describing advances in wafer counts, recording technologies and materials that will shape the next generation of data center drives.
There has been a steady increase in hard drive sizes, from 10 TB models in 2017 to today's 24 TB. Toshiba increased density by moving from a CMR design to an FC MAMR system, increasing the number of wafers from seven to nine and then to ten. It later increased density again with CMR and MAMR improvements, reaching 22 TB and 24 TB capacity in 2024.
MAMR and HAMR
In October we reported that Toshiba had confirmed 12-disk stack design for short-range drives, a first in the storage industry.
This approach adds two wafers to the familiar ten-disk arrangement and replaces aluminum substrates with glass, allowing for thinner disks, tighter tolerances and greater durability.
Toshiba merged this project with MAMR and said it plans to reach 40 TB capacity in 2027.
New slides, one of which can be seen above, expand on this plan. Toshiba still plans to release a 40TB class drive in 2027 using MAMR with 11 or 12 platters. A single track based on HAMR in 2026 should have a capacity of 40 TB and have 11 platters.
MAMR and HAMR are two energy-assisted magnetic recording approaches that increase data storage density beyond what traditional methods allow.
MAMR uses a microwave field to stabilize the recording process so data can be written to smaller magnetic areas without loss of accuracy.
HAMR uses a tiny, precisely controlled burst of heat from a semiconductor laser to instantly lower the carrier's resistance, allowing for even finer magnetic patterns.
Both methods allow manufacturers to pack more data onto each wafer, although HAMR typically provides higher long-term density gains.
The roadmap shows targets of 45 TB in 2028 and 55 TB or more after 2029 as HAMR and the 12-wafer stack mature, indicating what's to come largest hard drives on the market.
The company stated that it believed the use of thirteen plates could be feasible in one format.
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