Toshiba: 16TB MG08 HDDs

Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation announces MG08 series, the largest capacity 16TB [1]  [2] Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) HDD.

With 33% more capacity than 12TB drives, and 14% more capacity than prior 14TB models, MG08 drives are compatible a range of applications and OSs, and adapted to mixed random and sequential read and write workloads in both cloud and traditional datacenter environments.

The MG08 Series is Toshiba’s second-generation helium-sealed HDD family, and eighth-generation enterprise capacity HDD family. The company has delivered its 16TB capacity and improved power efficiency by utilizing the 9-disk helium design, introduced last year in 14TB models, and its own advanced precision laser welding process to ensure the helium remains sealed inside the drive case. The MG08 features 7,200rpm performance, a 550TB per year workload rating [3], a 2.5 million-hour MTTF [4], a 512MB cache buffer [5], and a choice of SATA and SAS interfaces – all in 3.5-inch [6] form factor.

The MG08 series illustrates Toshiba’s commitment to advancing HDD design to meet the evolving needs for storage devices suited for use in cloud-scale servers and storage infrastructure. As data growth continues at an explosive pace, the 16TB CMR capacity will help cloud-scale service providers and storage solutions designers to achieve higher storage densities for cloud, hybrid-cloud and on-premises rack-scale storage. With its improved power efficiency and 16TB capacity, the MG08 series will help lower the TCO of storage infrastructure designed for applications such as data-protection, big data aggregation, content serving and digital archiving.

“Toshiba’s new 16TB MG08 series delivers new levels of storage capacity and density while delivering improved power efficiency for our cloud-scale and storage solutions customers. Only high-density HDD technology can achieve our customers’ critical TCO objectives at a cost of pennies per gigabyte,” says Shuji Takaoka, GM of storage products sales and marketing division, Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation.

Shipments of samples of 16TB MG08 Series drives to customers will begin sequentially at the end of this month.

[1] Source: Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation, as of January 8, 2019.
[2] Definition of capacity: Toshiba defines a MB as 1,000,000 bytes, a GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes and a TB as 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. A computer OS, however, reports storage capacity using powers of 2 for the definition of 1GB = 230 = 1,073,741,824 bytes and therefore shows less storage capacity. Available storage capacity (including examples of various media files) will vary based on file size, formatting, settings, software and OS, such as Microsoft OS and/or pre-installed software applications, or media content. Actual formatted capacity may vary.
[3] Workload is a measure of the data throughput in a year, and it is defined as the amount of data written, read or verified by commands from the host system.
[4] MTTF is not a guarantee or estimate of product life; it is a statistical value related to mean failure rates for a large number of products which may not accurately reflect actual operation. Actual operating life of the product may be different from the MTTF.
[5] A MB means 1,048,576 bytes.
[6] 3.5-inch means the form factor of HDDs. It does not indicate a drive’s physical size.