Toshiba announces 16TB HDDh

Toshiba will start shipping samples of a 16TB HDD in its MG08 series at the end of this month. The hard drive has nine platters in its helium-filled housing. Western Digital will also release 16TB HDDs this year, as well as an 18TB model.

The 16TB MG08 still uses conventional magnetic recording, or cmr. Toshiba comes to the storage capacity by placing nine platters in a standard 3.5″ case filled with helium. The hdd runs at 7200rpm, has a cache buffer of 512MB and a claimed mttf of 2.5 million hours. Toshiba The product is aimed at the enterprise market. When the MG08 will be delivered on a large scale, what the prices are and when consumer models will follow is not known. In December last year the manufacturer started supplying a 14TB HDD for consumers.

Last week competitor Western Digital already announced to supply samples of 16TB drives. That manufacturer uses microwave assisted magnetic recording, or mamr. This technique uses microwaves generated by a spin torque oscillator, located near the writing head. This produces a small local electromagnetic field with which data with a much higher density can be written.

Western Digital 18TB drives should also be released this year. The manufacturer is working on integrating two actuators to drive the set of write heads for higher speeds. The manufacturer would like to do that from 2020, when 20TB hard drives should appear, the company announced at an investor meeting.

Images courtesy of WD, via AnandTech