Toshiba Unveils World's First FC-MAMR HDD: 18 TB, Helium Filled
Toshiba this week announced the industry's first hard drive featuring flux-control microwave-assisted magnetic recording (FC-MAMR) technology. The new MG09-series HDDs are designed primarily for nearline and enterprise applications, they offer an 18 TB capacity along with an ultra-low idle power consumption.
The Toshiba MG09-series 3.5-inch 18 TB HDD are based on the company's 3rd generation nine-platter helium sealed platform that features 18 heads with a microwave-emitting component which changes magnetic coercivity of the platters before writing data. The HD disks are made by Showa Denko K.K. (SDK), a long-time partner of Toshiba. Each aluminum platter is about 0.635 mm thick, it features an areal density of around 1.5 Tb/inch2 and can store up to 2 TB of data. The MG09 family also includes a 16 TB model which presumably features a lower number of platters (based on the same performance rating).
Previously:
Toshiba Will Adopt Western Digital's Microwave-Assisted Magnetic Recording Approach for Hard Drives
Toshiba Roadmap Includes Both MAMR and HAMR Hard Drives, as Well as TDMR and Shingles
Western Digital Releases New 18TB, 20TB EAMR Drives
Related Stories
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
Toshiba's HDD Tech Roadmap: A Mix of SMR, MAMR, TDMR, and HAMR
In an interview published this week with Blocks & Files, Toshiba outlined the company will be relying on a mix of hard drive technologies in order to keep increasing hard drive capacities. Along with current-generation two-dimensional magnetic recording (TDMR) and shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technologies, the company will also be tapping both microwave assisted magnetic recording (MAMR) as well as heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) for future drives. Already gearing up to ship its first 16 TB TDMR drives, Toshiba's short-term development plans call for it to adopt SMR as well as MAMR. Meanwhile in the longer-term, HAMR will be introduced for further capacity increases.
[...] By adopting MAMR for their 2019 – 2020 nearline HDDs Toshiba and Western Digital can continue using HDD media that is similar to platters used today. By contrast, Seagate is set to skip MAMR and use HAMR along with brand new disks instead.
Previously: Toshiba Will Adopt Western Digital's Microwave-Assisted Magnetic Recording Approach for Hard Drives
"Nobody" Wants SSDs with Over 16 TB of Storage?
Western Digital releases new 18TB, 20TB EAMR drives:
Earlier this month, Western Digital announced retail availability of its Gold 16TB and 18TB CMR drives, as well as an upcoming 20TB Ultrastar SMR drive. These nine-platter disks are the largest individual hard drives widely available today.
Earlier this year, rival drive vendor Seagate promised to deliver 18TB and 20TB drives in 2020, but they have not yet materialized in retail channels.
Seagate's largest drives, like Western Digital's, needed a new technology to overcome the Magnetic Recording Trilemma—but Western Digital's EAMR (Energy Assisted Magnetic Recording) is considerably less-exotic than the HAMR (Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording) used by Seagate. That more conservative approach likely helped Western Digital beat its rival to market.
The maximum usable data density on a magnetic recording device is limited by three competing factors. Magnetic coercivity—the strength of magnetic field required to demagnetize a domain—must be high enough to prevent the separately recorded grains from influencing one another and corrupting data. The field strength of the write head must be high enough to overcome the coercivity of the medium. Finally, the size of the field generated by the write head must be small enough so as not to overwrite adjacent areas.
[...] Although Western Digital is continuing its research into MAMR technology, the tech used in this month's new drives—EAMR, or Energy Assisted Magnetic Recording—is considerably less exotic. Rather than alter the magnetic properties of the medium with microwave or laser emissions, EAMR simply stabilizes the write field more rapidly and accurately, by using a bias current on the main pole of the write head as well as the current on the voice coils.
The potential data loss from drive failure grows ever larger...
Seagate: 100TB HDDs Due in 2030, Multi-Actuator Drives to Become Common
Seagate is on track to deliver ~50TB hard disk drives by 2026, ~100TB HDDs by 2030, and 120TB+ units early next decade, according to the company's recently revealed product and technology roadmaps. To hit capacity targets, Seagate will have to adopt new magnetic recording technologies. To ensure the high performance of its future drives, the company plans to leverage its multi-actuator technology more broadly. This tech doubles the performance of its hard drives, and it could become a standard feature on some of the company's product lines.
[...] Today's [heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR)] media is expected to enable drives featuring 80TB ~ 100TB capacity, according to developers. But, for 3.5-inch HDDs with a ~105TB capacity and 5 ~ 7Tb/in2 areal density, new ordered-granular magnetic films will be needed as grains will get very small and tracks will get very narrow. But ordered-granular media is expected to be a relatively short stop before 'fully' bit patterned media (BPM) technology comes into play with an 8Tb/inch2 areal density.
[...] A straightforward way to increase the [input/output operations per second (IOPS)]-per-TB performance of an HDD is to use more than one actuator with read/write heads, and this is exactly what Seagate is set to do. Using two actuators instead of one can almost double throughput as well as IOPS-per-TB performance, which is tremendously important for data centers. Furthermore, doubling the number of actuators also halves the time Seagate needs to test a drive before shipping, as it is faster to inspect eight or nine platters using two independent actuators, which lowers costs.
Previously: 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
Related: Toshiba Announces 16 TB and 18 TB Microwave-Assisted Magnetic Recording (MAMR) Hard Drives
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @08:46PM (8 children)
>> areal density of around 1.5 Tb/inch2 and can store up to 2 TB of data
And the rest of the space on the 3.5" disk is used for... ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @08:58PM
Spindle, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @09:04PM
8 bits per Byte
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @09:05PM
The flux capacitor.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Sunday February 21 2021, @09:14PM (3 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat-assisted_magnetic_recording [wikipedia.org]
(1.5/8) * (π * (3.5 / 2)) * 2 [double-sided] = 3.6075 TB
There is the spindle in the center that doesn't count, and probably some unusable area at the edges of the platter, and maybe some capacity reserved for error correction.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @03:27AM (1 child)
IIRC, typical 3.5" platters have around 75% usable area, mostly due to the significantly reduced transfer rates near the spindle. The outer track will be as close to the edge as they can manage. The 5:4 or 10:8 encoding required for clock recovery is the next biggest user at 20%, and isn't really negotiable. Sector gaps, and timing headers should be the next largest consumers, and reducing them was the main motivation for the move to 4k sectors. That more than paid for the increased space requirements needed for ECC. Reserve sectors only take up a tiny fraction, typically only a couple hundred sectors in total. It is solid state drives require a large reserve fraction due to their high wear rate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @04:56AM
That info is a little out of date. The usable area is a bit over 87%, thanks to things like ZBR and the encoding is more efficient than 8b/10b. And there are more reserve sectors in HDDs than you realize. They need them during production, testing, and low-level formatting to correct for manufacturing errors that will inevitably slip in without having to bin.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday February 22 2021, @04:13AM
Forgot to square the radius, but the real question is what % of the circle is usable.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Snotnose on Sunday February 21 2021, @10:23PM
Pron starring your mom.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @09:05PM (2 children)
Easier to just save only what’s really important. No terabytes of video, etc., most of which can bitrot with no consequence because it will never be watched.
Helium seals aren’t perfect. These drives will be scrap well before a smaller USB memory stick with only the needed stuff.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday February 22 2021, @06:00AM (1 child)
https://promotions.newegg.com/b2b/HGST/15-1527/images/imgs/pdf/Helium-Technology.pdf [newegg.com]
They are virtually perfect!
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @01:03AM
ROFLMAO. NO THANKS!
Thankfully, pre-helium HGST drives still are sold. Better 1TB with some years of life inside it, than 18TB ready to give up its helium ghost and take all the data with it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by cosurgi on Sunday February 21 2021, @09:29PM (6 children)
There was a huge backslash on HAMR and SMR drives, because they are extremely slow and cannot work properly in raid arrays. When the buffer is filled then the write time becomes so slow that the raid drivers considers the drive dead. That's because the overlapping tracks have to be read first, then modified and written back. Now MAMR does exactly the same thing, but with a lower power consumption.
Who is ever going to buy that?
#
#\ @ ? [adom.de] Colonize Mars [kozicki.pl]
#
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @09:43PM
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday February 21 2021, @09:53PM (3 children)
I haven't heard of any HAMR backlash. Got a link?
Overlapping tracks is shingled magnetic recording. It is not necessarily combined with HAMR or MAMR. HAMR/MAMR can reach higher capacities without resorting to SMR, or SMR can be added on top for that extra 15-25%.
Drives that sacrifice speed for extra capacity will be bought, but probably by the likes of Google and Amazon.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @03:33AM
SMR drives work well as backup drives and in DVR setups, but they should never be used for your OS or your home drive, let alone in a RAID. The backlash against them was due to crooked hard drive manufacturers selling SMR drives as CMR (and charging CMR prices).
(Score: 4, Informative) by cosurgi on Monday February 22 2021, @01:45PM
Small correction: they sold these slow drives without mentioning in specs that they are slow. Hence the class action lawsuit:
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/wd-class-action-lawsuit-smr-hard-drive-us-canada [tomshardware.com]
https://www.techradar.com/news/western-digital-faces-class-action-suits-over-smr-hard-drives [techradar.com]
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/06/lawsuit-vs-western-digital-wants-to-end-any-use-of-smr-in-nas-drives/ [arstechnica.com]
https://www.hattislaw.com/cases/investigations/western-digital-lawsuit-for-shipping-slower-smr-hard-drives-including-wd-red-nas/ [hattislaw.com]
#
#\ @ ? [adom.de] Colonize Mars [kozicki.pl]
#
(Score: 2) by cosurgi on Monday February 22 2021, @01:47PM
> It is not necessarily combined with HAMR or MAMR
ah. So I have mixed SMR with these two. Sorry about that. Still the distrust remains in me.
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#\ @ ? [adom.de] Colonize Mars [kozicki.pl]
#
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @02:34AM
SMR drives can work in RAID arrays. In fact, we have a number spinning away right now without problem. The only real issue is that you have is that you have to be very careful when you mix them with CMR drives without adjusting the ERC. Even without a proper setup, not mixing the two or watching your random small (compared to your block size) writes and you are just fine. There are a number of other things you can do to tune or architect things to where you'll never notice the difference between your CMR and SMR arrays at a practical level. Other than the increased amount of storage, that is. And you if you want to absolutely squeeze everything out of it you are probably doing that to your array, whether SSD, CMR, or SMR, anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @10:50PM (6 children)
Where am I supposed to get so much porn to fill it up, eh?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday February 21 2021, @10:55PM
Rule 34 in 8K at 120fps.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Tork on Sunday February 21 2021, @11:02PM (3 children)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @11:27PM (2 children)
Uhm...
I am partial to, you know, butt-stuff, but without the fecal matter. You know, I insist on the girls/MILFs carry out complete enema before, you know, "performing."
No gay stuff (nohomophobe)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @11:34PM (1 child)
I know a guy very much like you. He lies in the corner licking his balls most of the day, but comes running when I get his dog food ready.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @11:42PM
Depends. Which dog food brand?
Don't generalize. It's racist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @11:42PM
You can't even store 1% of xvideos with these.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @11:57PM (1 child)
We were promised in 2012 [techspot.com] that this generation would be farting out 60TB drives - whereTF are they? I've been using 16TB drives for a year, move on already!
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Monday February 22 2021, @12:43AM
October 2017: Western Digital to Use Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording to Produce 40 TB HDDs by 2025 [soylentnews.org]
November 2017: Seagate to Stay the Course With HAMR HDDs, Plans 20 TB by 2020, ~50 TB Before 2025 [soylentnews.org]
November 2018: Seagate Plans 36 TB HAMR HDDs by 2022, 48 TB by 2024 [soylentnews.org]
Seagate Wants to Ship 100TB HDDs by 2025 [tomshardware.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Barenflimski on Monday February 22 2021, @12:26AM (6 children)
From what I understand, it is very difficult to keep helium in a container where it doesn't either diffuse, or just plain leak. Maybe what I've heard is in different applications?
Will this be an issue with these drives? Will the helium take longer to diffuse out of the system than the hard drive would last?
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Monday February 22 2021, @12:49AM (2 children)
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/helium-filled-hard-drive-failure-rates/ [backblaze.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Barenflimski on Monday February 22 2021, @05:51AM
That's fairly interesting. Thanks for the article takyon.
TLDR; These manufacturers found a way to seal up the helium. Some of the drives have a helium sensor in them, and in all but just a couple of drives, out of thousands, the helium hasn't leaked. The drives themselves seem to have a failure rate the same as any other drive, but these folks expect these helium filled drives to last much longer which *should* drive down the failure rates.
So to answer my own questions. The helium leaking isn't an issue. So far it seems the helium will last longer than the mechanical parts of the drive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @01:12AM
The article tells exactly NOTHING about the LONG-TERM perspectives of the drives not losing their helium. Spinning rust at home is for long-term storage, not short-term cost-effectiveness.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @03:07PM
Just line the disk enclosure with an alpha-particle emitting radio-isotope. What could possibly go wrong?
(Score: 2) by martyb on Wednesday February 24 2021, @05:33AM (1 child)
Yes, helium has its challenges, but are you posibly confusing it with hydrogen? ISTR that is the real troublemaker when it comes to storage.
But having said that, I am starting to doubt myself. He is a noble gas and exists atomically, where H tends to exist as H2.
Whichever is the lightest gas (and that was the point of it -- improved "flying height" over the platters), I would suggest against extended periods of trying to breathe either one!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @07:15AM
Both Hydrogen and Helium both have a tendency to leak through a container. The atoms and molecules are so small that they can and do work their way out through the gaps of the molecules making the container. There are things you can do to work around it and slow the process but it is literally unstoppable short of technology beyond our current ability to manufacture effectively at a reasonable cost.
Hydrogen has additional problems too because it can slowly react with the container to introduce weaknesses into the material itself. However, that is really only an issue during manufacture, during certain industrial processes, or when dealing with it in an atomic form.