Toshiba 24TB CMR and 28TB SMR Enterprise Helium-Sealed 3.5-Inch HDDs

Toshiba Electronics Europe GmbH announces the Mx11 family of helium-sealed HDDs. The Mx11 family includes the MG11 Series, which provides capacities of up to 24TB[1] using conventional magnetic recording (CMR), and the MA11 Series which offers up to 28TB capacities with SMR.

It is designed to deliver new levels of density and power efficiency to customers tasked with controlling (or managing) operational costs while meeting the relentless demands of data growth. Built on a common architecture, both products feature a 10-disk, helium-sealed, standard 3.5-inch[2] 7,200rpm design that leverages Toshiba’s innovative flux control microwave assisted magnetic recording (FC-MAMR) technology. Engineered for higher performance and 24/7 reliability, the Mx11 family is designed with a 1GiB[3] buffer, a workload[4] rating of 550TB per year, an MTTF/MTBF[5] of 2.5 million hours, and an AFR[5] of 0.35%.

The MG11 CMR HDD Series enables cloud, data center, and enterprise storage customers to scale storage density within existing infrastructure rapidly. Built with a 1GiB buffer, the new 24TB HDD is faster[6] than its predecessor, with an approximately 9% faster maximum sustained transfer speed of 295MiB/s[7]. With a choice of 6Gb SATA or 12Gb SAS interfaces, the MG11 Series fits seamlessly into any data center to support storage, online backup and archive, and video surveillance applications. It is available with sanitize instant erase (SIE) and self-encrypting drive (SED) options.

It achieves 2.8TB per disk using SMR technology. The host-managed SMR increases drive capacity by overlapping the physical tracks on the disk during write operations. Data centers with software that can optimize will benefit from improved cost efficiencies through higher storage densities. The new MA11 Series is available in 28TB and 27TB capacities with a 6Gb SATA interface and with SED options for enhanced security.

“Backed by 50 years of continuous HDD innovation, the Mx11 Series delivers new levels of capacity and TCO efficiency enabling customers to optimize operational costs while expanding their data center infrastructure,” said Larry Martinez-Palomo, VP, head of storage products division.

Sample shipments of the MG11 Series will start this month, and the MA11 Series in 4Q24.

[1] Definition of capacity: 1TB = one trillion bytes, but the actual available storage capacity may vary, depending on the operating environment and formatting. Available storage capacity (including examples of various media files) will vary based on file size, formatting, settings, software and operating system and/or pre-installed software applications, or media content. Actual formatted capacity may vary.
[2] “3.5-inch” is the form factor of HDDs. It does not indicate the drive’s physical size.
[3] A GB is 230, or 1,073,741,824 bytes.
[4] Workload is a measure of data throughput in a year. It is defined as the amount of data written, read or verified by commands from the host system.
[5] MTTF/MTBF and AFR is not a guarantee or estimate of the product life; rather it is a statistical value related to mean failure rates for a large number of products, which may not accurately reflect actual operation. AFR is defined as the annual operating hours divided by the mean time to failure. The actual product life of the product may vary.
[6] Comparison between the SATA interface 512e model MG11ACA24TE and the previous generation MG10AFA22TE.
[7] A MB is 220, or 1,048,576 bytes. Read and write speeds may vary depending on the host device, read and write conditions, and file size.
[8] The HDDs with any optional security function may not be available in countries where such HDDs are prohibited or limited due to export control and local regulations.