Toshiba announces microwave-assisted 18 TB HDDs for desktop and NAS

[nanoguy]

In brief: SSDs are the best choice as an OS drive, but HDDs still trounce them in terms of price per gigabyte and are much more practical for general data storage. That's why Toshiba made two 18-terabyte HDDs for your data hoarding needs that happen to be the first consumer drives to feature energy-assisted magnetic recording technology.

This week, Toshiba unveiled the industry's first desktop and NAS hard disk drives that use flux-control microwave-assisted magnetic recording (FC-MAMR) technology. The new magnetic recording tech debuted earlier this year with the MG09-series models for nearline and enterprise applications, and now it's trickling down to consumers and small businesses.

The N300 is the company's new HDD for home users who need to build or upgrade a desktop PC or a NAS. The previous model had a 16 terabyte capacity, but thanks to FC-MAMR, this has been expanded to 18 terabytes on the new model—a 12.5 percent increase. The same applies to the X300 intended for high-end desktops, gaming consoles, and home media servers.

Both are 7,200 RPM drives equipped with nine platters and a 512 megabytes buffer, but Toshiba hasn't said anything about performance yet. Considering the similarity in design to the MG09-series drives, the maximum sustained data transfer speed should be around 281 megabytes per second.

Toshiba says the X300 features improvements in the drive stabilization mechanism for better operational reliability and caching optimizations for better overall performance. The N300 is designed to be used in up to eight drive bays and has integrated rotational vibration sensors to ensure consistent performance.

Both drives carry a three-year limited warranty and are rated for workloads of up to 180 terabytes per year. They'll be available sometime later this fall, but there's no information on MSRP yet.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/91308-toshiba-announces-microwave-assisted-18-tb-hdds-desktop.html

 

[Squid Surprise]

Ironwolf has been at a max of 16TB for a couple years... will be interesting to see what "rivals" will be releasing over the next year or so.

I'm kind of shocked we haven't see 20+ TB drives yet - perhaps we can simply blame the pandemic...

 

[VitalyT]

I can't help feeling cheated, when Windows shows me these as 16TB, and not 18TB.

 

[kiwigraeme]

There is still a lot of work needed to make cloud subscriptions better -so less need to buy consumer hard drives . Music is getting pretty good . Not sure anyone buys Encyclopedia Britannica offline anymore .
Academic Papers can be expensive - thought can email authors for free copy .
People still have huge TV/Movie servers - as they can control quality. full remuxes , bonus features, commentaries and availability - F&F #3 probably always on subscription . 1960 classic French movie - who knows .
Also a lot of stuff is region dependant - remember having to buy the right DVD player etc to play DVDs you buy from the US or UK . No wonder we do no trust the rights providers

 

[Lew Zealand]

There is still a lot of work needed to make cloud subscriptions better -so less need to buy consumer hard drives . Music is getting pretty good . Not sure anyone buys Encyclopedia Britannica offline anymore .
Academic Papers can be expensive - thought can email authors for free copy .
People still have huge TV/Movie servers - as they can control quality. full remuxes , bonus features, commentaries and availability - F&F #3 probably always on subscription . 1960 classic French movie - who knows .
Also a lot of stuff is region dependant - remember having to buy the right DVD player etc to play DVDs you buy from the US or UK . No wonder we do no trust the rights providers

Yes, all of this. There was a favorite DVD player that was easily hackable to region-free than I used once upon a time to watch European-sourced DVDs at native frame rate and resolution, as opposed to a crap NTSC conversion. Nowadays, a clean rip of that and they look perfect every time.

 

[dualkelly]

There is still a lot of work needed to make cloud subscriptions better -so less need to buy consumer hard drives . Music is getting pretty good . Not sure anyone buys Encyclopedia Britannica offline anymore .
Academic Papers can be expensive - thought can email authors for free copy .
People still have huge TV/Movie servers - as they can control quality. full remuxes , bonus features, commentaries and availability - F&F #3 probably always on subscription . 1960 classic French movie - who knows .
Also a lot of stuff is region dependant - remember having to buy the right DVD player etc to play DVDs you buy from the US or UK . No wonder we do no trust the rights providers

Plus the cloud only works if you have an internet connection and if we take in high def content a broadband connection at that. Don't need that with local storage.

 

[Uncle Al]

WOW ..... and to think I was so impressed when Apple released the first hard drive at all of 5 mb ....... whew, that was a long time ago ....

 

[TheBigT42]

WOW ..... and to think I was so impressed when Apple released the first hard drive at all of 5 mb ....... whew, that was a long time ago ....

The First hard drive I purchase was Seagate 30 Meg ST238R

 

[umbala]

WOW ..... and to think I was so impressed when Apple released the first hard drive at all of 5 mb ....... whew, that was a long time ago ....

Cool story bro.

 

[cliffordcooley]

I've already purchased my last HDD. If it is not SSD, I don't want it.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

There is still a lot of work needed to make cloud subscriptions better -so less need to buy consumer hard drives . Music is getting pretty good . Not sure anyone buys Encyclopedia Britannica offline anymore .
Academic Papers can be expensive - thought can email authors for free copy .
People still have huge TV/Movie servers - as they can control quality. full remuxes , bonus features, commentaries and availability - F&F #3 probably always on subscription . 1960 classic French movie - who knows .
Also a lot of stuff is region dependant - remember having to buy the right DVD player etc to play DVDs you buy from the US or UK . No wonder we do no trust the rights providers

Cloud subscriptions for data back-up, how quaint. You sir are just waiting to be hacked.

 

[kiwigraeme]

Cloud subscriptions for data back-up, how quaint. You sir are just waiting to be hacked.

Say what - how is say a spotify sub - or Netflex sub - waiting to be hacked - etc for log on details ?.
My point is solely about why people may choose to build their own media servers as movie/TV subs online are not up to scratch - but music subs are pretty good

 

[Homerlovesbeer]

I've already purchased my last HDD. If it is not SSD, I don't want it.

That's a very stubborn and ignorant position to hold and I gather you don't store anything large or in large quantities.

 

[cliffordcooley]

That's a very stubborn and ignorant position

You might want to rethink that. I was speaking for myself. I think I am a better judge of what I need than you are. You are suggesting that if I don't store things in large quantities. Then maybe I should. I think those words fit your response better.

 

[yRaz]

WOW ..... and to think I was so impressed when Apple released the first hard drive at all of 5 mb ....... whew, that was a long time ago ....

I remember back in 2003 looking at the network storage for my school amd seeing "1.7TB avaliable" and having my mind blown. I think I might have had a 40gb HDD back

 

[NumberSix]

Bring back the IBM Deathstar, there is quality and reliability for you.

 

[elementalSG]

Ironwolf has been at a max of 16TB for a couple years... will be interesting to see what "rivals" will be releasing over the next year or so.

I'm kind of shocked we haven't see 20+ TB drives yet - perhaps we can simply blame the pandemic...

I just bought some Seagate 16TB Exos because they are back to just $320 after the Chia crypto crash. I have to tell you, though, these disks are THICK. As thick as the 3.5" drive bay spec can handle and much thicker than the 8TBs they are replacing. I then read that Seagate needed 9 platters to get 16TB.

It's no wonder we haven't seen 20TB yet; they literally can't make the hard drive any thicker and still fit in a 3.5" drive bay!

 

[Vanderlinde]

"3 year limited warranty" meaning we're not responsible if the drive happens to fail earlier then the advertised 3 years and any data loss is for your own account. But for 79$ you can use our data recovery service blabla.

First HDD manufacturer that can actually guarantee 3 years of operating hours, wether itll be heavy use, standby use or regular use has my money.

 

[Tom Yum]

I just bought some Seagate 16TB Exos because they are back to just $320 after the Chia crypto crash. I have to tell you, though, these disks are THICK. As thick as the 3.5" drive bay spec can handle and much thicker than the 8TBs they are replacing. I then read that Seagate needed 9 platters to get 16TB.

It's no wonder we haven't seen 20TB yet; they literally can't make the hard drive any thicker and still fit in a 3.5" drive bay!

They should bring back 5 1/4" drives like the good ol' days Drop the rotational speed to 3600rpm (they've lost the speed war to SSD's, might as well just focus on their main strength which is capacity) and keep the track density the same. You could easily double storage capacity that way, 50TB of sweet sweet storage with a 100MB/s sequential transfer speed (with random write measured in kB/s lol).

 

[Nobina]

I still have a 500GB Toshiba hard drive. I have 1.2TB of storage in total of which 30% is used, mostly for some games. If not for those, I would get by on one 512GB SSD easily. I try to only keep stuff that I use on my PC so if I find a bunch of movies, games that I watched/played already and they've been sitting there for a long time I just delete them. I don't like seeing clutter.

This HDD would be, for me, like having infinite storage

 

[Squid Surprise]

They should bring back 5 1/4" drives like the good ol' days Drop the rotational speed to 3600rpm (they've lost the speed war to SSD's, might as well just focus on their main strength which is capacity) and keep the track density the same. You could easily double storage capacity that way, 50TB of sweet sweet storage with a 100MB/s sequential transfer speed (with random write measured in kB/s lol).

100mb/s is cutting it close though... with 8k video on the horizon (and some already using it) you'd need that as a minimum for playback... HDDs are great for storing huge media libraries - and will be even more essential with the huge size of 8k movies.

200mbps+ is still sufficient for years to come though... I'm sure we'll see 50TB at existing (or greater) speeds soon enough.

 

[elementalSG]

They should bring back 5 1/4" drives like the good ol' days Drop the rotational speed to 3600rpm (they've lost the speed war to SSD's, might as well just focus on their main strength which is capacity) and keep the track density the same. You could easily double storage capacity that way, 50TB of sweet sweet storage with a 100MB/s sequential transfer speed (with random write measured in kB/s lol).

It’s true, 5.25” platters will more than double the platter size vs a 3.5” alla the simple Pi x r^2 formula. Except for the terrible random access speeds, I’m all in!

 

[NotAFanboyofAny]

I can't help feeling cheated, when Windows shows me these as 16TB, and not 18TB.

What do you mean?

 

[VitalyT]

What do you mean?

Exactly what I wrote. Didn't think it would need explanation.

 

[RudyBob]

Long ago there was an column in PC Magazine by Jim Seymour titled "A Gig is Not Enough"

I don't need 18 but I would someday