Toshiba this week announced the industry’s first 18TB hard drives featuring flux-control microwave-assisted magnetic recording (FC-MAMR) technology, that are designed for desktops and inexpensive NAS. The X300 and N300 drives not only offer a very high capacity and enhanced performance, but they also promise enhanced reliability.
Toshiba’s X300 18TB HDDs for high-end desktops, as well as N300 18TB HDDs for NAS with up to eight drives, use the same platform as the company’s MG09-series HDDs for enterprise and nearline applications. This is the company’s third-generation 7200 RPM-class helium-sealed platform, sporting nine aluminum platters as well as a microwave-emitting component near the write heads that changes the magnetic coercivity of the media before recording data. The platters are made by Showa Denko K.K. (SDK) and feature a 2TB capacity, as well as approximately 1.5 Tb/inch2 areal density that was enabled by Toshiba’s FC-MAMR technology.
Toshiba has not formally disclosed performance numbers for its 18TB HDDs for desktops and NAS, but since they have the same spindle speed and the same areal density as the MG09-series devices, expect them to offer similarly high — 281 MB/s — maximum sustained data transfer rate.
