- Toshiba charts the path to hard drives from 24 TB capacity to 55 TB and beyond
- The storage giant aims for 40TB drives as early as next year with new technologies
- 12 tray design supports Toshiba’s push towards higher capacities
Toshiba has outlined plans to push hard drive capacity well beyond today’s limits, with new slides pointing the way to 40TB models and an eventual move towards 55TB and beyond.
PC clock says the company detailed its roadmap at a recent symposium in Japan, detailing advances in platter counts, recording technologies and materials that will shape its next generation of data center drives.
There has been a steady increase in HDD storage sizes from 2017’s 10TB models to today’s 24TB capacity. Toshiba raised the density by moving from the CMR design to its FC MAMR system, expanding the platter count from seven to nine and then to ten. It later increased density again with adjustments to both CMR and MAMR, reaching 22TB and 24TB capacities in 2024.
MAMR and HAMR
In October, we reported that Toshiba had verified a 12-disk stack design for nearline drives, marking a first for the storage industry.
This approach adds two plates to the familiar ten-disk layout and replaces aluminum substrates with glass, allowing thinner disks, finer tolerances and better durability.
Toshiba paired the design with MAMR and said it planned to reach 40TB capacity by 2027.
The new slides, one of which can be seen above, expand on this plan. Toshiba is still aiming to ship a 40TB class drive in 2027 using MAMR with 11 or 12 platters. A separate track, based on HAMR, is set to pass 40TB in 2026 with 11 platters.
MAMR and HAMR are two approaches to energy-assisted magnetic recording that increase storage density beyond what conventional methods allow.
MAMR uses a microwave field to stabilize the writing process so that data can be written to smaller magnetic areas without losing accuracy.
HAMR relies on a small, precisely controlled burst of heat from a semiconductor laser to temporarily lower the medium’s resistance, enabling even finer magnetic patterns.
Both methods allow manufacturers to pack more data onto each platter, although HAMR generally offers higher long-term density gains.
The roadmap shows targets of 45TB by 2028 and 55TB or more after 2029 as HAMR and 12-platter stacking mature, pointing towards what would be among the largest hard drives on the market.
The company has said that it believes it is doable to go to thirteen dishes in the same format.
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