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Replacing the 18TB drive as the flagship of Toshiba's MG10 enterprise focussed hard drive family is the new 20TB model which uses Toshiba’s fourth-generation, 10-disk Helium-sealed design. Priced at £360 here in the UK, we find out what sort of performance is on offer from this behemoth HDD.
The 20TB Toshiba MG10 (MG10ACA20TE) is the latest flagship drive for the MG product line, taking over from the 18TB drive. The three-capacity MG10 product line is completed by a 16TB entry model. The 20TB drive uses Toshiba's fourth-generation ten disk / twenty head platform, using 2TB platter technology. It has a spindle speed of 7,200rpm and a 512MB cache. Toshiba quote a maximum sustained transfer rate of 268MB/s for the drive.
The official power consumption figures for the drive are 8.11W when operating (Random 4K read/write) and 4.38W in active idle. These are up slightly from the previous flagship 18TB drive; 7.86W active, 4.17W active idle.
Toshiba quote an annual workload figure of up to 550TB/year for the 20TB drive and back it with a 5-year warranty.
Physical Specifications:
- Usable Capacities: 20TB.
- Spindle Speed: 7,200rpm.
- No. Of Heads: 20.
- No. Of Platters: 10.
- Cache: 512MB.
- Recording Method: Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) / FC-MAMR (Flux-controlled microwave-assisted magnetic recording).
- Interface: Serial ATA (SATA) 6Gb/s (SATA III)
- Form Factor: 3.5in
- Dimensions: 101.85 x 26.1 x 147.0mm.
- Drive Weight: 720g.
Firmware Version: 0102.
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.
For testing, the drives are all wiped and reset to factory settings by HDDerase V4. We try to use free or readily available programs and some real-world testing so you can compare our findings against your own system.
This is a good way to measure potential upgrade benefits.
Main system:
Intel Core i5-10600 with 16GB of DDR4-3200 RAM and an ASRock Z490 Steel Legend motherboard.
Other drives
Seagate NAS 8TB
Seagate Exos X16 16TB
Seagate Exos X14 14TB
Seagate Exos X20 20TB
Seagate IronWolf Pro 14TB
Seagate BarraCuda Pro 12TB
Seagate IronWolf Pro 12TB
Seagate IronWolf Pro 18TB
Seagate IronWolf Pro 20TB
Seagate IronWolf 10TB
Toshiba MG08ACA16TE 16TB
Toshiba N300 8TB
Toshiba NAS N300 14TB
Toshiba P300 3TB
Toshiba X300 6TB
WD Gold 12TB
WD Black 6TB
WD Black 4TB
WD Red Pro 22TB
WD Red Pro 20TB
WD Red 4TB
WD Red 8TB
Software:
Atto Disk Benchmark.
CrystalMark 7.0.0.
IOMeter.
UL Solutions PCMark 10 Data Drive Benchmark.
All our results were achieved by running each test five times with every configuration this ensures that any glitches are removed from the results.
CrystalDiskMark is a useful benchmark to measure the theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSDs. We are using V7. to test HDD drives.
In the CrystalDiskMark 4K QD32 T1 test, the 20TB MG10 read test result of 3.383MB/s sees it sitting in fifth place in our results chart. However, its write result of 1.488MB/s is nowhere near as impressive.
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturer's RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.
Toshiba rate the sustained transfer rate of the 20TB MG10 as 268MB/s, a figure we can confirm with the ATTO benchmark test results of 262MB/s for both reads and writes.
IOMeter is another open-source synthetic benchmarking tool which is able to simulate the various loads placed on a hard drive and solid-state drive technology.
We test with both random read and write 4k tests, as shown above. There are many ways to measure the IOPS performance of a hard drive, so our results will sometimes differ from the manufacturer’s quoted ratings. We do test all drives in exactly the same way, so the results are directly comparable.
The drive appears to handle random reads much more efficiently than writes with test scores of 655 IOPS for reads and 429 IOPS for writes.
Toshiba quote transfer rates for both read and writes for the 20TB MG10 as 268MB/s a figure we could confirm and indeed better with our throughput tests. Reads peaked at 293MB/s (4MB block) before dropping back to finish the test run at 262MB/s. Writes peaked at 283MB/s (8MB block) but fell away to finish the test at 259MB/s.
We tested the 20TB MG10 with a number of scenarios that it may face in the real world. The settings for these scenarios are as follows.
File Server
512MB file size, 16KB Block size
80% Read 20% Write 100% Random
I/O queue depth 128
Web Server
1GB file size, 16KB Block size
100% Read 0% Write 100% Random
I/O queue depth 64
Database
2GB file size, 4KB Block size
90% Read 10% Write, 90% Random, 10% Sequential
I/O depth 128
Workstation
1GB file size, 16KB Block size
70% Read 30% Write, 100% Random, 0% Sequential
I/O depth 6
The 20TB Toshiba MG10 handles the Web Server trace the best out of the four tests with a result figure of 15.67MB/s, the third fastest we've seen to date for this particular test.
The PCMark 10 Data Drive Benchmark has been designed to test drives that are used for storing files rather than applications. You can also use this test with NAS drives, USB sticks, memory cards, and other external storage devices.
The Data Drive Benchmark uses 3 traces, running 3 passes with each trace.
Trace 1. Copying 339 JPEG files, 2.37 GB in total, in to the target drive (write test).
Trace 2. Making a copy of the JPEG files (read-write test).
Trace 3. Copying the JPEG files to another drive (read test).
The 20TB MG10 handles the rigours of the PCMark 10 Data Drive Benchmark pretty well with an overall bandwidth figure of 106MB/s.
To test the real-life performance of a drive we use a mix of folder/file types and by using the FastCopy utility (which gives a time as well as MB/s result) we record the performance of the drive reading from & writing to a 256GB Samsung SSD850 PRO.
Test files:
100GB data file.
60GB iso image.
60GB Steam folder – 29,521 files.
50GB File folder – 28,523 files.
12GB Movie folder – (15 files – 8 @ .MKV, 4 @ .MOV, 3 @ MP4).
10GB Photo folder – (304 files – 171 @ .RAW, 105 @ JPG, 21 @ .CR2, 5 @ .DNG).
10GB Audio folder – (1,483 files – 1479 @ MP3, 4 @ .FLAC files).
5GB (1.5bn pixel) photo.
BluRay Movie – 42GB.
21GB 8K Movie demos – (11 demos)
16GB 4K Raw Movie Clips – (9 MP4V files).
4.25GB 3D Printer File Folder – (166 files – 105 @ .STL, 38 @ .FBX, 11 @ .blend, 5 @ .lwo, 4 @ .OBJ, 3@ .3ds).
1.5GB AutoCAD File Folder (80 files – 60 @ .DWG and 20 @.DXF).
The MG10 produced very consistent performance when it came to handling the larger file sizes with an average write figure for the six large file transfers of 284MB/s. The fastest write performance was the BluRay movie at 287MB/s while the fastest read speed came from the 5GB image transfer at 289MB/s. The slowest of the file transfers was the 50GB File Folder, full of small bity files, with writes at 159MB/s and reads at 115MB/s.
The new flagship drive of Toshiba's MG10 family is the 20TB model. Offering 11.1% more capacity than the previous 18TB flagship model, the 20TB drive is compatible with a wide range of mixed random and sequential read and write workloads for cloud, hybrid-cloud and on-premises rack-scale storage. The drive uses Toshiba's Flux-controlled microwave-assisted magnetic recording (FC-MAMR) technology to increase write performance when dealing with the higher areal density discs that these very large-capacity drives use.
The 20TB M10 is officially rated as up to 268MB/s for transfer rates. We could confirm this figure and indeed better it with the default CrystalDiskMark Sequential test (QD32 T1) with result figures of 288MB/s for reads and 285MB/s for writes.
Being aimed at the enterprise segment, it comes as no real surprise to find that the 20TB MG10 has a few tricks up its sleeve to keep working in a 24/7 365-day environment. To maintain maximum performance during operations the drive supports Toshiba's Stable Platter and Dynamic Cache technologies. Stable Platter reduces vibrations by stabilising the motor shaft at both ends while Dynamic Cache optimises how the cache is allocated by a combination of a cache algorithm and onboard buffer management.
The MG series also make use of Persistent Write Cache Technology to protect data. If there is a power supply interruption while the drive is writing to the disc, the data is saved in the cache and written to the drive when the power is restored.
The 20TB MG10 is available in two sector formats 4Kn (MG10ACA20TA) and 512e (MG10ACA20TE) as well as Sanitize Instant Erase (SIE) and Self Encrypting Drive (SED) options.
We found the Toshiba MG10ACA20TE on ebuyer for £359.99 (inc VAT) HERE.
Discuss on our Facebook page HERE.
Pros
- Huge capacity.
- Drive technologies.
- 5-year warranty.
Cons
- All that new technology doesn't come cheap.
KitGuru says: Toshiba's latest flagship drive for the MG10 Enterprise focussed product line adds more capacity for the data centre environment. It features an interesting technology in Toshiba's Flux-controlled microwave-assisted magnetic recording (FC-MAMR), a technology which should enable even larger capacity drives in the future.
