Published in PC Hardware

Toshiba releases FC-MAMR

by on26 February 2021


8 TB capacity along with an ultra-low idle power

Toshiba has released what it calls the industry's first hard drive featuring flux control microwave assisted magnetic recording (FC-MAMR) technology.

The new MG09-series HDDs are designed primarily for nearline and enterprise applications. They offer an 18 TB capacity along with ultra-low idle power consumption. 

Dubbed the Toshiba MG09-series 3.5-inch 18 TB HDD is based on the company's 3rd generation nine-platter helium sealed platform that features 18 heads with a microwave-emitting component which changes magnetic coercivity of the platters before writing data.

SDK has made the HD disks and each aluminium platter is about 0.635 mm thick. It features an areal density of around 1.5 Tb/inch2 and can store up to 2 TB data. The MG09 family also includes a 16 TB model, which features a lower number of platters.

For modern enterprise and nearline 3.5-inch HDDs, Toshiba's MG09-series drives use a motor with a 7200-RPM spindle speed.

The HDDs have a 512 MB buffer and are rated for a 281 MB/s maximum sustained data transfer rate.  Toshiba has not updated the new products' random access performance, though it is likely that their per-TB IOPS performance is lower compared to predecessors. The manufacturer will offer its new drives both with SATA 3.3 (6 Gbps) and SAS 3.0 (12 Gbps) interfaces and a selection of logical data block length.

One of the noteworthy things about Toshiba's MG09-series FC-MAMR HDDs is their power consumption. In idle mode, they typically consume 4.16/4.54 Watts (SATA/SAS models), which is considerably lower when compared with Seagate's Exos X18 and Western Digital's Ultrastar DC HC550.

Power consumption efficiency at idle (large hard drives could spend plenty of time idling) is 0.23 Watts per TB (in the SATA version). Meanwhile, the new drives are rated for 8.35/8.74 Watts (SATA/SAS SKUs) during read/write operations, which is higher when compared to the DC HC550 as well as predecessors from the MG07 and the MG08-series.

Last modified on 26 February 2021
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