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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Toshiba at CES 2019: World's First 16 TB TDMR HDD Debuts [anandtech.com]

Toshiba has announced the industry's first hard drive featuring a 16 TB capacity. The MG08-series HDDs are designed for nearline applications and use two-dimensional magnetic recording (TDMR) technology, therefore offering consistent and predictable performance.

Toshiba's MG08 [semicon-storage.com] 3.5-inch helium-filled hard drives rely on nine 1.7 TB PMR platters developed by Showa Denko K.K. (SDK) as well as 18 reader/writer TDMR heads designed by TDK. The HDD features a 7200 RPM spindle speed, a 512 MB DRAM buffer, and a SATA 6 Gbps or SAS 12 Gbps interface (depending on the model).

[...] Toshiba's MG08 drives represent a number of industry firsts. First up, Toshiba is the only company in world to use a nine-platter HDD design. It was necessary with its 14 TB hard drives as the company did not use TDMR back then (unlike Seagate). Secondly, the MG08 uses SDK's PMR platters featuring a 0.635 mm z-height, that's down from 0.8 mm disks usually used for eight-platter designs. Thirdly, it uses TDMR heads developed by TDK, which enabled Toshiba to use the said platters.

Related: Seagate's 12 TB HDDs Are in Use, and 16 TB is Planned for 2018 [soylentnews.org]
Western Digital Announces a 15 TB Hard Drive for Data Centers [soylentnews.org]
Seagate Starts to Test 16 TB HAMR (Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording) Hard Drives [soylentnews.org]

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