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Toshiba plans to boost its hard drive capacities by using Microwave-Assisted Magnetic Recording rather than Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording. The company could use the technology to produce an ~18 terabyte hard drive:
Toshiba, like Western Digital, is going to use Microwave-Assisted Magnetic Recording (MAMR) to escape the inability of current PMR tech to go beyond 15-16TB disk drive capacity. [...] Seagate has chosen to [increase capacities] using heat (Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording or HAMR). Proponents of the MAMR approach say HAMR stresses the disk surface and read:write heads rendering the disk unreliable in the long-term. Seagate disputes this and has demonstrated long life HAMR read:write heads.
Western Digital has chosen MAMR for its future technology and now we know Toshiba is doing the same.
[...] MAMR uses 20 - 40GHZ frequencies and the [Spin Torque Oscillator (STO)] bombards a bit area with a circular AC microwave field, lowering its coercivity and enabling the bit value to be written (magnetic polarity changed as desired.)
It is reckoned that MAMR could lead to 4Tbit/in2 areal densities, beyond the 700 to 1,000Gbit/in2 used currently, and leading to 40TB drives.
Related: Western Digital to Use Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording to Produce 40 TB HDDs by 2025
Seagate to Stay the Course With HAMR HDDs, Plans 20 TB by 2020, ~50 TB Before 2025
Seagate Plans 36 TB HAMR HDDs by 2022, 48 TB by 2024
Seagate Starts to Test 16 TB HAMR (Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording) Hard Drives
(Score: 4, Informative) by richtopia on Tuesday December 11 2018, @08:59AM (1 child)
Some background: Toshiba and WD are pretty close thanks to their SanDisk Joint Venture. I doubt the share much regarding HDD manufacturing, but it probably made the conversation for MAMR adoption easier.
Today there is only three players making spinning disks: Seagate, WD, and Toshiba. I seem to remember Seagate and WD both claim to be the largest player (depending on how you count) with Toshiba making up the remaining 10-20% of the market.
The article does not make clear if Toshiba will develop MAMR independently or license the technology from WD. I would suspect licensing, as WD probably already owns all of the patents required to implement MAMR. The timeline is also beautifully vague, with only 2016 and 2018 labelled. So MAMR is not coming in the next month, but sometime in the future after that.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday December 11 2018, @09:02PM
I've had nothing, but bad experiences with Seagate. Also, the only person I know who got a hybrid SSHD (also from Seagate), had it die on them. On the other hand, I've had WD and Toshiba drives and have had 0 failures.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"