Toshiba: hard drives are alive and well. A 16 TB enterprise model is ready

According to an estimate by IDC, reported by Toshiba, today in the world the ” Global Datasphere “, ie the total amount of data stored on all existing systems in the world, has a size of 33 ZB (Zettabyte). This figure, already impressive, is destined to rise dramatically in the coming years, reaching 175 ZB in 2025.

To understand, a Zettabyte is equivalent to 10²¹ bytes or an unpronounceable number with 21 zeros … We have often talked about how the proliferation of devices, the explosion of IoT devices and, in general, the digitization of any human activity have the direct consequence of creating an increasingly huge amount of data.

Long live hard drives

Toshiba itself has no problem admitting that the performance of SSD is significantly higher than those of traditional hard drives and that in the coming years in some market segments, those in which pure performance is essential, SSD will definitely replace hard drives. The growing need for storage cannot be completely satisfied, even remotely, only by SSD and in many cases absolute performance is not an indispensable element.

Today the cost of SSD, for the same size, is still significantly higher and although it is foreseeable that the cost of SSD will drop, the cost of hard disks is also expected to fall further. Furthermore, in some application areas, at the same cost, where extreme performance is not required, with a hard disk based system equivalent performances can be obtained to SSD based system, but having a decidedly superior capacity.

Always the same IDC estimates confirm that both the total quantity of SSD and the hard disks used globally will increase and that the percentage of hard disks in the Global Datasphere will continue to be prevalent.

Toshiba MG08: a 16 TB hard drive for enterprise applications

In this context, Toshiba is continuing to invest in innovation on hard drives, not so much to increase performance, which has reached a limit difficult to overcome, but to increase the capacity of the single drive. One of the segments in which Toshiba is innovating the most is that of enterprise applications, with a line of dedicated products, divided into two sectors, performance and capacity.

The first sector is the one that will be most affected by the development of SSD and is the one where Toshiba is also convinced that SSD will become the only tool used. In the capacity segment, on the other hand, hard disks will play a prominent role.

The latest in the capacity sector is the Toshiba MG08, which reaches a maximum size of 16TB. This result is possible thanks to the use of two essential technologies to reach 16TB. The first, already used in the models of the previous series that had reached a capacity of 14TB, is the use of ” Helium-sealed Technology “.

In practice inside the hard disk helium is used instead of air, which has much smaller molecules and the key is to be able to completely seal the envelope, something much more complex than using air.

The advantage of using a less dense gas like helium is to create less friction inside the disc, which allows you to use less energy to rotate the discs, reduces the possibility of defects and lengthens the average life of the discs. The second technology, which allowed Toshiba to go from 14 TB to 16 TB is called TDMR (Two Dimensional Magnetic Recording) and consists of using two slightly misaligned reading heads.

In hard disks of this size, the density of the tracks is very high, and it is possible, with a single head, to read the wrong track. Using two read heads simultaneously, together with filters and an equalizer, avoids the risk of this interference.

The MG08 series hard drives are designed to be integrated into multi hard disk storage solutions, with various applications in the enterprise environment. More information on the official Toshiba website.