Toshiba MG10 (MG10ACA20TE) 20TB HDD Review

Toshiba's 20TB MG10 is built on a 26.11mm thick, 3.5in format. It uses Toshiba’s fourth-generation Helium technology which in turn enables Toshiba to use ten 2TB platters and 20 heads in the enclosure. The drive has a spindle speed of 7,200rpm and there is 512MB of cache.

The 20TB MG10 uses Toshiba's Flux Control Microwave-assisted Magnetic Recording technology. The demand for storage capacity in data centres is growing ever larger and hard drive manufacturers have been working tirelessly on raising disc densities for the standard 3.5in drive format to try and match this demand. But as the limits of conventional HDD technology are being pushed, problems arise that need some innovative technologies to counter them. As disk areal densities increase so does the threat of magnetic inter-track interference (ITI), a potential cause of tracking problems and data errors.

TDMR (Two-Dimensional Magnetic Recording) technology which uses two read elements in the drive head has been developed to counter problems with read operations while Toshiba has brought Flux-controlled microwave-assisted magnetic recording (FC-MAMR) technology to the table to improve stability during write operations.

FC-MAMR directs more magnetic field flowing from the magnetic recording pole toward the recording media to increase its recording capacity by using a type of spin-torque oscillator. Two magnetic layers are built into the write gap of the write head and a bias current is applied which reverses the magnetization of one of the layers, an effect known as spin-transfer torque, improving the recording field and the performance of the write head.

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