Toshiba HAMR Hard Drives

2024: Product Announcement

In mid-May 2024, Toshiba announced the first 32 TB hard drive. The storage is made using the technology of magnetic recording with heating (HAMR).

The HAMR technique involves heating a portion of the disc with a laser beam, thereby making it possible to increase the recording density. The drive is made in a 3.5-inch form factor, and its design includes 10 plates, each of which holds 3.2 TB of information. Tiled magnetic recording (SMR) technology is involved, the peculiarity of which is that magnetic tracks overlap each other. Thus, the disk is intended primarily for storing cold data: these can be backups of information, archives or documents written only for reading. SMR devices are in demand, in particular, by hyperscalers.

Toshiba

In addition, Toshiba introduced a second hard drive with a capacity of more than 30 TB - a drive made using the method of magnetic recording using microwave radiation (MAMR). This technology is also aimed at increasing the density of information storage. The new 3.5-inch drive contains 11 plates with a total capacity of 31 TB. That is, there are 2.8 TB of data per plate. It is noted that the creation of both new products was the result of many years of cooperation with the manufacturer of hard drive plates Resonac and the supplier of read/write heads TDK.

Toshiba is simultaneously continuing to develop next-generation high-capacity hard drives using HAMR and MAMR technologies. Mass production of HAMR drives will begin after the verification phase, "says Larry Martinez-Palomo, vice president and head of storage products at Toshiba.[1]

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