35TB HDD by FY25 and 40TB+ With HAMR Beyond That

Toshiba rolls out technology and capacity roadmap

President and CEO of Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation, Hiroyuki Sato, unveiled what the company calls a descriptive roadmap for high-capacity HDDs during an investor relations event last week in Japan.

In the past year, the HDD solutions provider outlined some key technologies for next-gen drives, including Flux-Control MAMR, or FC-MAMR, an enhanced PMR recording technology that utilizes some features of the spin torque oscillator of MAMR to achieve 2TB/disk capacities.

FC-MAMR supports the company’s current volume production of a 9-disk, 18TB nearline drive and will also enable 20TB on a 10-disk design, which is expected to roll out this year.

The technology,as announced, is intended to be a stepping stone on the way to launching full MAMR, or MAS-MAMR drives. In order to archive the promised areal density boosts from MAS-MAMR, significant changes to the recording media are required to address the potential microwave resonance issues that can limit areal density. Like other full-energy assist technologies such as HAMR, the promised rollout has been long in coming, with delays caused by technical and commercialization challenges.

In TDSC’s roadmap, seen below, the company expects to release a 26TB, 10-disk HDD in FY22 (sometime before the end of March 2023) and plans for a 30TB MAS-MAMR model in FY23. In the company’s illustrated roadmap, HAMR also appears sometime in FY24 or later to drive higher capacities, but both MAS-MAMR and HAMR technologies run concurrently, possibly indicating that MAS-MAMR may support mainstream volumes for 35TB by fiscal year 2025 and that HAMR will support 40TB+ capacities beyond that. Interestingly, the roadmap also points to 11-disk drives combining with MAS-MAMR to enable 30TB and greater capacities.