Toshiba has launched a 22TB MG10F disk drive, five months after Seagate and 14 months after Western Digital.
Basically the drive adds 10 percent capacity to its existing 3.5-inch form-factor MG10 range, which tops out at with a 20TB model announced a year ago. Like that drive it is an enterprise capacity or nearline product, spinning at 7,200rpm with up to 10 platters, and either 12Gbit/s SAS (2 to 22TB) and 6Gbit/s SATA (1 to 22 TB) interfaces.
The drive uses different technologies as the capacities increase. From 1TB to 10TB it has conventional perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) media in an air-filled enclosure. The 12TB to 16TB products switch to helium-filled enclosures but stay with PMR while the 18, 20 and 22TB variants have Flux Control Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording (FC-MAMR) platters and heads inside their helium-filled enclosures. FC-MAMR uses a microwave effect to improve write signal effectiveness at high areal densities.
The cache buffer size varies between 128MiB (1 & 2TB), 256MiB (4 – 14TB) and 512MiB (16 – 22TB) and the sustained data rate varies between 204 MBps for the 1 and 2TB drives and 284MBps for the 22TB drives.
Western Digital’s Gold 22TB drive provides up to 291MBps and Seagate’s 22TB IronWolf Pro delivers up to 285MBps.
Toshiba does not provide any shingled magnetic recording (SMR) version of this drive which could provide a 15 percent or so additional capacity increase through partially overlapping write tracks. Western Digital’s 22TB drives have 26TB SMR variants. A February 2022 roadmap for Toshiba’s disk drives showed a 26TB SMR product, which has not arrived as a product.
The MG10F with a SAS interface is now sample shipping with SATA product sampling starting in the fourth quarter. No pricing information was provided. SED (Self-Encrypting Drive) and SIA (Sanitize Instant Erase) options are available. Download a datasheet here.
