Toshiba is spending ¥60 billion (€340 million) to double nearline hard drive production as demand for high-capacity storage continues to outpace supply.
According to Tom’s Hardware the Japanese storage maker will expand its HDD manufacturing operation in the Philippines, with the additional capacity expected to come online during fiscal 2027.
The investment marks Toshiba’s first major expansion of HDD manufacturing capacity in five years and will add new production lines at its Laguna Technopark facility. Toshiba plans to use the extra capacity for increasingly large enterprise drives, starting with 30TB-class models during 2027.
The company’s roadmap then moves towards 40TB drives, followed by roughly 65TB products around 2030 and eventually 100TB-class monsters.
Despite years of predictions that flash storage would send spinning rust the way of the floppy disk, hyperscale data centres continue swallowing enormous quantities of HDD capacity.
Toshiba has already sold out much of its recent production, leaving little room to meet additional demand without expanding its factories.
Its next-generation drives will use microwave-assisted magnetic recording technology and designs containing as many as 11 platters.
The company expects these developments to push individual HDD capacities beyond 30TB while keeping costs per terabyte low enough to remain attractive for bulk storage.
Toshiba currently trails Seagate and Western Digital in maximum commercially available capacity. Its enterprise range tops out at 24TB for conventional models and 28TB using shingled magnetic recording.
The new manufacturing lines will feature more automation, which Toshiba expects to cut labour requirements by about 40 per cent while improving production yields.
Toshiba wants the expansion to help increase its share of the nearline HDD market from roughly 10 per cent to 30 per cent over the medium term.
The company faces plenty of competition. Seagate has moved into heat-assisted magnetic recording and plans 50TB-class drives, while Western Digital has its own roadmap towards increasingly ridiculous capacities.
