Toshiba Unveils World’s First 14TB HDD with Conventional Magnetic Recording

By Modupe Gbadeyanka

Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation today announced the launch of the MG07ACA Series, the world’s first enterprise 14TB Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) HDD.

Using a 9-disk, helium-sealed design, the new MG07ACA Series provides the power-efficient capacity and storage density needed by cloud-scale and enterprise storage solution providers to achieve their TCO objectives.

“We have raised the bar with the new MG07ACA Series 9-disk helium-sealed design,” said Akitoshi Iwata, Vice President of Storage Products Division, Toshiba Electronic Devices and Storage Corporation. “By utilizing an innovative design, we continue to improve the benefits that high-capacity disk storage can deliver to our broad global customer base.”

The MG07ACA Series features both 14TB 9-disk and 12TB 8-disk models. The helium-sealed 3.5-inch mechanical design realizes better storage density and a lower HDD operating power profile than the previous MG06ACA Series for optimal TCO in cloud-scale infrastructures.

The series also utilizes Toshiba Group’s laser welding technology to ensure the helium remains securely sealed inside the drive enclosure. The drives support a SATA 6Gbit/s interface and 7,200rpm access performance.

The 9-disk 14TB models achieve a 40% increase in maximum capacity over previous MG06ACA 10TB models. Additionally, the 14TB models improve power efficiency by over 50% (W/GB).

“Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage’s first helium-sealed nearline drive intercepts the market at a class-leading 14TB capacity with CMR,” said John Chen, industry analyst at Trend Focus. “Its early time-to-market for this capacity positions the company well to meet the storage needs of large hyperscale and cloud companies. Additionally, the company’s choice of a 9-disk platform paves the way to achieving higher capacities in future product generations.”

“While enterprise server and storage customers realize that shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology can improve HDD capacity, the adoption of SMR HDD products into server and storage systems is a transition that will take several years,” according to John Rydning, Research Vice President for hard disk drives at IDC. “Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage’s new helium-sealed enterprise HDD is the world’s first 14TB of storage capacity using conventional rather than shingled magnetic recording technology, giving enterprise customers the highest capacity HDD available in the market today for existing server and storage system architectures.”