Toshiba Reveals CMR 24 TB and SMR 28 TB Hard Disk Drives

[Nomad76]

Toshiba Electronic Components Taiwan Corporation (Toshiba) announces the Mx11 family of helium-sealed high-capacity HDDs. The Mx11 family includes the MG11 Series, which provides capacities of up to 24 TB using conventional magnetic recording (CMR), and the MA11 Series which offers up to 28 TB capacities with shingled magnetic recording (SMR).

The new Mx11 family is designed to deliver new levels of density and power efficiency to customers tasked with controlling (or managing) operational costs while meeting the relentless demands of data growth. Built on a common architecture, both products feature a 10-disk, helium-sealed, standard 3.5-inch 7,200rpm design that leverages Toshiba's innovative flux control microwave assisted magnetic recording (FC-MAMR) technology. Engineered for higher performance and 24/7 reliability, the Mx11 family is designed with a 1GiB buffer, a workload rating of 550 TB per year, an MTTF/MTBF of 2.5 million hours, and an AFR of 0.35%.





The MG11 CMR HDD Series enables cloud, data center, and enterprise storage customers to rapidly scale storage density within existing infrastructure. Built with a 1GiB buffer, the new 24 TB HDD is faster than its predecessor, with an approximately 9% faster maximum sustained transfer speed of 295MiB/s. With a choice of 6 Gbps SATA or 12 Gbps SAS interfaces, the MG11 Series fits seamlessly into any data center to support data storage, online backup and archive, and video surveillance applications. In addition to 24 TB, the MG11 Series is available in 22 TB, 20 TB, 18 TB, 16 TB and 14 TB capacities with sanitize instant erase (SIE) and self-encrypting drive (SED) options for enhanced security.

The MA11 Series achieves 2.8 TB per disk using SMR technology. The MA11 Series host-managed SMR increases drive capacity by overlapping the physical tracks on the disk during write operations. Data centers with software that can optimize the MA11 Series host-managed SMR design will benefit from improved cost efficiencies through higher storage densities. The new MA11 Series is available in 28 TB and 27 TB capacities with a 6 Gbps SATA interface and with SED options for enhanced security.

"Backed by 50 years of continuous HDD innovation, the MX11 series delivers new levels of capacity and total cost of ownership (TCO) efficiency enabling customers to optimize operational costs while expanding their data center infrastructure" said Noriaki Katakura, Division President, Storage Products Division, Toshiba Electronics Components Taiwan Corporation.

Sample shipments of the MG11 Series will start this month, and the MA11 Series in the fourth calendar quarter of this year.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[csendesmark]

I already feel sorry whomever buys those SMR drives

 

[Wirko]

A grand total of 100 drive rewrites (actually reads too, not just writes) in five years, which is probably the warranty period. Then what happens?

 

[HBSound]

I understand that in regular PC uses, say ITX, on the motherboard, you have a couple of M.2 drives. Sometimes, our people insert large hard drives like this as a huge storage container? Nothing more, nothing less? It is something that I am considering. For example, people use Google Drive, etc, but now you have to give all your stuff to the world's supercomputers to analyze and AI you! I would consider and think, pull my stuff from platforms like that and just place it on a drive like this, and do what I could to apply all the security options I could.

Lastly, I would want to make sure a hard drive like this does not just internally click away, which now causes a noise complaint.

Your thoughts?

 

[Octavean]

I understand that in regular PC uses, say ITX, on the motherboard, you have a couple of M.2 drives. Sometimes, our people insert large hard drives like this as a huge storage container? Nothing more, nothing less? It is something that I am considering. For example, people use Google Drive, etc, but now you have to give all your stuff to the world's supercomputers to analyze and AI you! I would consider and think, pull my stuff from platforms like that and just place it on a drive like this, and do what I could to apply all the security options I could.

Lastly, I would want to make sure a hard drive like this does not just internally click away, which now causes a noise complaint.

Your thoughts?

My thoughts,....

If anyone wants ~22TB of storage buy two 22TB drives at least and RAID them together. Better yet, buy four 22TB drives with a RAID1 array in one location and an identical RAID1 array in another remote location (both arrays with the same data). Better still, have a third remote location with,......

If you buy just one 22TB drive and hope for the best then you're just asking for trouble. So long as the data is what is important, not the drive,.....

As for SMR, certainly not my preference but for write once archives it might be OK. Personally I would rather go with LTO for that use case.

 

[HBSound]

My thoughts,....

If anyone wants ~22TB of storage buy two 22TB drives at least and RAID them together. Better yet, buy four 22TB drives with a RAID1 array in one location and an identical RAID1 array in another remote location (both arrays with the same data). Better still, have a third remote location with,......

If you buy just one 22TB drive and hope for the best then you're just asking for trouble. So long as the data is what is important, not the drive,.....

As for SMR, certainly not my preference but for write once archives it might be OK. Personally I would rather go with LTO for that use case.

So, according to your information, I would need at least two to support an RAID setup so that if the drive fails, there is a backup.

 

[Wirko]

If anyone wants ~22TB of storage buy two 22TB drives at least and RAID them together. Better yet, buy four 22TB drives with a RAID1 array in one location and an identical RAID1 array in another remote location (both arrays with the same data). Better still, have a third remote location with,......

Wrong! RAID is not a replacement for backup. Among many csuses of data loss, which ones does RAID protect you from? What about backup?

 

[thesmokingman]

Hoarders rejoice!!

 

[Octavean]

So, according to your information, I would need at least two to support an RAID setup so that if the drive fails, there is a backup.

Not exactly,....

Just assume the drive, any drive, will fail. The drive is not the thing, the data is (presumably). Therefore one must adopt whatever methodology or stratagem necessary to protect the data. Therefore, 3, 2, 1,....

The 3-2-1 backup strategy simply states that you should have 3 copies of your data (your production data and 2 backup copies) on two different media (disk and tape) with one copy off-site for disaster recovery.

Which in part is why I mentioned wanting an LTO solution.

While I would have great difficulty justifying the cost of a modern LTO solution (~$6000 USD or so) for my personal needs, I can justify buying some older generation LTO solutions off of e-Bay or something. I just need to find the right generation to price ratio.

Having said that, for my personal use I have three dedicated NAS units. One Synology DS1815+, one QNAP TS-653D and one UGreen DXP8800 Plus. All have the same data replicated on them. The QNAP TS-653D and UGreen DXP8800 Plus are in the same location and the Synology DS1815+ has been relocated to an off sight location. This is currently the best I can do now under the circumstances. Each NAS is hosting about ~70TB+ of data and growing.

 

[Wirko]

Hoarders rejoice!!

Yes but ...

The MG11 CMR HDD Series enables cloud, data center, and enterprise storage customers

It's meant for data centers, which in turn will offer their services to retail hoarders.

 

[efikkan]

A grand total of 100 drive rewrites (actually reads too, not just writes) in five years, which is probably the warranty period. Then what happens?

Enterprise drives typically last ~8-10 years of 24/7 use, but you might want to switch them out at the first sign of aging. (regular SMART-tests and looking at the SMART data is important)

There is a significant difference in quality of enterprise grade drives vs. the cheaper consumer drives like WD Green, Red, the cheaper ones from Seagate, etc. So for a home workstation or file server/NAS you'll it will probably last longer than in a data center, and it will probably be obsolete before it stops working.

One thing to note, operating temperature affects HDD lifespan. If it's powered on continously, make sure there is active cooling for it, and don't be tempted to put them in the bottom or back of a case where there is no airflow.

If anyone wants ~22TB of storage buy two 22TB drives at least and RAID them together. Better yet, buy four 22TB drives with a RAID1 array in one location and an identical RAID1 array in another remote location (both arrays with the same data). Better still, have a third remote location with,......

Any irreplaceable/important data should have multiple independent copies, regardless of whether it's 1 GB or 100 TB of data. It is a common practice to have at least 3 independent copies of such data, why do I emphasize independent? Well, if you have it all automatically synced and you accidentally delete or overwrite a file, then all copies are gone…

Hoarders rejoice!!

Yes, they make these, just for hoarders!
Stay tuned for next year, when they release 50 TB…

Which in part is why I mentioned wanting an LTO solution.

I'm not into tape, but my concern has always been, if I need it that long term (e.g. 10-20 years), will I be able to reasonably source a good tape drive then?

There is also the M-disc DVDs and Blu-Rays, but I haven't research whether they are truly reliable long-term.

I can't speak for others, but even though my projects and other personal files makes up a few TBs, only a fraction of that would be really important, so I could live with a long-term backup solution which is slightly lower capacity.

Having said that, for my personal use I have three dedicated NAS units. One Synology DS1815+, one QNAP TS-653D and one UGreen DXP8800 Plus. All have the same data replicated on them. The QNAP TS-653D and UGreen DXP8800 Plus are in the same location and the Synology DS1815+ has been relocated to an off sight location. This is currently the best I can do now under the circumstances. Each NAS is hosting about ~70TB+ of data and growing.

My data is a bit smaller than yours. I recently upgraded my workstation with 2x10 TB WD Gold which will serve my needs for the next couple of years, and my personal non-"work" files are on HDDs in my secondary computer, both with RAID 1 setups. Then this is mirrored to my local file server, and I have multiple external drives which I rotate. I do most of my routines (semi-)manually, to keep in control. For data which may be changed, I typically have multiple snapshots (either by folder or individual files) in each data set, but for larger media files which are "never" changed, I only keep one in each data set. I try to always have checksums, otherwise multiple copies wouldn't get you far.

 

[Wirko]

Enterprise drives typically last ~8-10 years of 24/7 use, but you might want to switch them out at the first sign of aging. (regular SMART-tests and looking at the SMART data is important)

There is a significant difference in quality of enterprise grade drives vs. the cheaper consumer drives like WD Green, Red, the cheaper ones from Seagate, etc. So for a home workstation or file server/NAS you'll it will probably last longer than in a data center, and it will probably be obsolete before it stops working.

One thing to note, operating temperature affects HDD lifespan. If it's powered on continously, make sure there is active cooling for it, and don't be tempted to put them in the bottom or back of a case where there is no airflow.

I can agree with all that but... Putting a "workload rating" on an HDD seems pointless to me, especially without context. At what temperature? What kind of workload is this, random or seq? And it seems extremely conservative. How can storage system designers make use of this rating? In contrast, SSD endurance workloads are described in JEDEC JESD 218 and 219.

Any irreplaceable/important data should have multiple independent copies, regardless of whether it's 1 GB or 100 TB of data. It is a common practice to have at least 3 independent copies of such data, why do I emphasize independent? Well, if you have it all automatically synced and you accidentally delete or overwrite a file, then all copies are gone…

Exactly, and that's the practical difference between RAID mirroring and backup that I mentioned.

I'm not into tape, but my concern has always been, if I need it that long term (e.g. 10-20 years), will I be able to reasonably source a good tape drive then?

Haha, whoever has ever owned a cassette player knows how these machines love to eat and crumple magnetic tape, so yeah.

For data which may be changed, I typically have multiple snapshots (either by folder or individual files) in each data set, but for larger media files which are "never" changed, I only keep one in each data set. I try to always have checksums, otherwise multiple copies wouldn't get you far.

Hm, I think I'm doing something similar, but I use a very slow method with CloneSpy doing binary compare between snapshots, then deleting files from older snapshots if they are identical to those from latest snapshot. What software do you use to manage the checksums?

 

[slyphnier]

Enterprise drives typically last ~8-10 years of 24/7 use, but you might want to switch them out at the first sign of aging. (regular SMART-tests and looking at the SMART data is important)

There is a significant difference in quality of enterprise grade drives vs. the cheaper consumer drives like WD Green, Red, the cheaper ones from Seagate, etc. So for a home workstation or file server/NAS you'll it will probably last longer than in a data center, and it will probably be obsolete before it stops working.

One thing to note, operating temperature affects HDD lifespan. If it's powered on continously, make sure there is active cooling for it, and don't be tempted to put them in the bottom or back of a case where there is no airflow.

that significant different in quality, like more vibration/heat tolerance in rack enviroment, and different firmware for different error recovery behavior
plus like 5years + recovery support etc.

i think sometimes people miss-understand that buying enterprise drives = better quality = last much longer
but its not always the case, enterprise drive designed for 24/7 heavy I/O
do consumer use those feature that on enterprise drives ? if not, then there almost no point paying for extra money imo

iirc backblaze have report using consumer hdd in their storage pods in past, and result its not much different in lifespan compared to enterprise
and this old google consumer hdd report that google been using for their storage back years ago :

https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//archive/disk_failures.pdf

for me personaly, if i using it on a nas, i would rather, buy extra consumer drive to backup rather than paying single enterprise drive

 

[Wirko]

that significant different in quality, like more vibration/heat tolerance in rack enviroment, and different firmware for different error recovery behavior
plus like 5years + recovery support etc.

i think sometimes people miss-understand that buying enterprise drives = better quality = last much longer
but its not always the case, enterprise drive designed for 24/7 heavy I/O
do consumer use those feature that on enterprise drives ? if not, then there almost no point paying for extra money imo

iirc backblaze have report using consumer hdd in their storage pods in past, and result its not much different in lifespan compared to enterprise
and this old google consumer hdd report that google been using for their storage back years ago :

https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//archive/disk_failures.pdf

for me personaly, if i using it on a nas, i would rather, buy extra consumer drive to backup rather than paying single enterprise drive

To add to that, datacenters view disks as consumables. If 3% die in a year, that's an inconvenience and added cost, but no data is lost, and no data is inaccessible for long.

Meanwhile, enthusiasts are still looking for that magic HDD that will last forever and never die, with 100% reliability.

 

[efikkan]

Hm, I think I'm doing something similar, but I use a very slow method with CloneSpy doing binary compare between snapshots, then deleting files from older snapshots if they are identical to those from latest snapshot. What software do you use to manage the checksums?

I'm a Linux guy, so I use Linux tools:
rsync - for synchronization
cfv - for checksum creation and verification (but it's no longer packaged with the latest Ubuntu)
7zip - whenever I want to compress
I use these and more with some tiny scripts to create checksum files (either single files, directories or recursively), then I just a tiny command to validate any checksum file recursively. I handle any issues manually so far.
For Windows there is something similar to cfv called Hashcheck Shell Extension, which integrates into the right-click menu in Explorer. I haven't used it extensively, but it seems to do the job.

My current drives are mostly WD Gold and Ultrastar (the older CMR drives), and two older 3TB WD Blacks (old, but were spares for a while). Of SSDs, I have 3x Samsung 970 Pro, PM883, PM893, WD SN850X, 2x Intel 545s, 520, Pro 7600p. Those configured as RAID 1 are using Linux' md, with ext4 used as file system (NTFS only used for a couple of drives).

i think sometimes people miss-understand that buying enterprise drives = better quality = last much longer
but its not always the case, enterprise drive designed for 24/7 heavy I/O
do consumer use those feature that on enterprise drives ? if not, then there almost no point paying for extra money imo

iirc backblaze have report using consumer hdd in their storage pods in past, and result its not much different in lifespan compared to enterprise
and this old google consumer hdd report that google been using for their storage back years ago :

https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//archive/disk_failures.pdf

for me personaly, if i using it on a nas, i would rather, buy extra consumer drive to backup rather than paying single enterprise drive

And yet in recent years Backblaze have pretty much exclusively used enterprise class drives.
Among consumer drives, the WD Blacks are fairly good, but they cost about the same as WD Gold, and haven't been updated in years so they top out at 10 TB. (and they usually cost more than WD Gold in retail) WD Red are a little cheaper per TB than enterprise drives, but are known for their tendency for failure. WD Red Pro cost about the same as WD Gold, and yet I've seen a lot of complaints about these. WD Red/Red Pro are commonly used in NAS', which unfortunately are often poorly cooled. It would be interesting to see how much that skews the failure rates. But regardless, it generally doesn't cost significantly more for the best drives there is, so why not?

As to what constitutes a drive failure, it varies greatly depending on who you ask. As I mentioned, I try to replace them when I first notice any symptom of age/pre-fail. While a good RAID setup will buy you some time, it is wise to replace a failing drive quickly, as you probably then in reality have no redundancy on those sections of your data.

 

[slyphnier]

And yet in recent years Backblaze have pretty much exclusively used enterprise class drives.
Among consumer drives, the WD Blacks are fairly good, but they cost about the same as WD Gold, and haven't been updated in years so they top out at 10 TB. (and they usually cost more than WD Gold in retail) WD Red are a little cheaper per TB than enterprise drives, but are known for their tendency for failure. WD Red Pro cost about the same as WD Gold, and yet I've seen a lot of complaints about these. WD Red/Red Pro are commonly used in NAS', which unfortunately are often poorly cooled. It would be interesting to see how much that skews the failure rates. But regardless, it generally doesn't cost significantly more for the best drives there is, so why not?

As to what constitutes a drive failure, it varies greatly depending on who you ask. As I mentioned, I try to replace them when I first notice any symptom of age/pre-fail. While a good RAID setup will buy you some time, it is wise to replace a failing drive quickly, as you probably then in reality have no redundancy on those sections of your data.

i think we should look at their reports whether enterprise drive have much lower failure rate compared to consumer date, back when they using
based this : https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-for-2018/
and latest report : https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q1-2024/
basically there no different between too, there some years consumer higher by around 0.2% range

there are more report for consumer drive such as WD red simply because it used by tons of end-user, so people like you and me when have problem report/ask to internet
while enterprise drive, that large share used by company, obviously we will getting less report from those

and usually enterprise drive tend more noisy and probably run hotter compared to consumer/nas drive

most people on r/datahoarder agree that getting enterprise drive isnt worth, not if the price different is significant (like this : https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/blp99x EDIT: ops its r/hardware not datahoarder)

but if you can get good price that not much different from consumer one, then yeah why not

all in all it depends on the storage you building again
if you creating array like 60TB, then yeah picking enterprise drive would better choice despite the price

 

[trsttte]

i think we should look at their reports whether enterprise drive have much lower failure rate compared to consumer date, back when they using
based this : https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-for-2018/
and latest report : https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q1-2024/
if there anything to note AFR is 0.15% higher with enterprise drive, which basically there no different between too

there are more report for consumer drive such as WD red simply because it used by tons of end-user, so people like you and me when have problem report/ask to internet
while enterprise drive, that large share used by company, obviously we will getting less report from those

most people on r/datahoarder agree that getting enterprise drive isnt worth (like this : https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/blp99x ), not if the price different is significant
but if you can get good price that not much different from consumer one, then yeah why not

The premium on enterprise drives is the warranty and continued support, not actual hardware quality. It's been known since forever ago the same hardware is sold under different names with slightly different firmware, including even the external hdd that with some luck can get you top of the line helium filled drives.

For a consumer it's probably better to buy more drives for cheaper than to pay for the enterprise warranty and support.