Toshiba unveils 28TB hard drive to compete with Western Digital and Seagate — but is it too late for the Japanese company?
Toshiba has announced its Mx11 family of hard drives, aiming to challenge Western Digital and Seagate’s dominance in the high-capacity storage market.
The new Mx11 series includes the MG11, which offers up to 24TB with conventional magnetic recording (CMR), and the MA11, which offers 28TB with shingled magnetic recording (SMR).
Both models are designed to meet the growing demand for storage in data centers and enterprise environments. Featuring a 10-disk, helium-sealed design and operating at 7,200rpm, Toshiba claims these drives offer improved storage density and energy efficiency.
Tough competition
The MG11 supports cloud, data center, and video applications with options for a 6Gbps SATA or 12Gbps SAS interface and advanced security features such as sanitize instant erase (SIE) and self-encrypting drives (SED). Built with Toshiba’s FC-MAMR technology, the MG11 is designed for higher density and power efficiency. Engineered for 24/7 reliability, it features a 1GiB buffer, a workload rating of 550TB per year, and a 2.5M hour MTTF. With a 9% improvement in sustained transfer speeds of up to 295MiB/s, it is ideal for high-speed, high-capacity storage applications.
The MA11, focused on higher capacity, achieves up to 28TB per drive by utilizing shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology. This allows for overlapping tracks on the drive to increase storage density, making the 28TB drive especially suitable for data centers with software optimized for SMR. Like the MG11, the MA11 is available with a 6Gbps SATA interface and self-encrypting drive options for enhanced security.
“Building on 50 years of continuous HDD innovation, the Mx11 series delivers new levels of capacity and total cost of ownership (TCO) efficiency, enabling customers to optimize operational costs while expanding their data center infrastructure,” said Larry Martinez-Palomo, Vice President and Head of the Storage Products Division at Toshiba.
Despite the impressive specs, Toshiba faces stiff competition. Seagate offers the Exos X26z, a 25TB host-managed shingled magnetic recording (HM-SMR) unit, and the Exos Mozaic 3+, a 30TB HDD. Western Digital offers, among others, the 24TB WD Gold Enterprise-class SATA HDDas well as 26TB, 27TB and 28TB models in its Ultrastar DC HC680 series. Larger models are already in development.
Deliveries of the MG11 series will start soon and the MA11 is expected to be available in late 2024.
