Showa Denko K.K. (SDK), one of the world’s largest manufacturers of hard disk drives, has confirmed the development of a medium using microwave-assisted switching-microwave assisted magnetic recording technology (MAS-MAMR). This technology will be adopted by Toshiba, one of Showa Denko’s main customers, laying the foundation for the construction of a large-capacity HDD of more than 30TB.
According to a report by TomsHardware, MAS-MAMR technology uses microwaves to greatly change the magnetic coercivity of hard disk media, making the track narrower, thereby increasing the area density, and is part of the MAMR technology. This technology was jointly developed by Showa Denko (media with a brand-new magnetic), TDK (read/write heads equipped with dual spin-injection-layer), and Toshiba (drives). However, the specific area density has not yet been disclosed, but it is enough for Toshiba to manufacture hard drives with a capacity of more than 30TB.
Replacing discs and read/write heads is a big deal for hard drive manufacturers. Under normal circumstances, they are more willing to change a certain key part. Seagate had to change the structure of the hard drive due to the use of heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology. Toshiba is currently facing the same problem, but the MAS-MAMR technology does not seem to need to be significantly modified, which also allows the technology to be used in the next few years.
A few months ago, Toshiba released the industry’s first 18TB hard drive with MAMR microwave-assisted magnetic recording (FC-MAMR) technology, which is the X300 series for desktop computers and the N300 series for NAS, both of which are consumer products. These are Toshiba’s third-generation 7200 RPM-level helium-filled technology hard drives, equipped with a 512MB cache, and are 9-disc storage. The disc used is also manufactured by Showa Denko, with a single disc capacity of 2TB, and a density of approximately 1.5 Tb/inch2 achieved through FC-MAMR technology. Earlier, Toshiba also released the enterprise-level MG09 series, which applied FC-MAMR technology for the first time, achieving a 12.5% increase in storage density.