Toshiba Corp. on Wednesday began to ship samples of two new large capacity nearline hard disk drives (HDDs). The 3.5” 7200rpm Toshiba MG-series includes both Serial ATA and SAS version that deliver 4TB of storage, the largest capacity yet offered by Toshiba. Samples of lower capacity models in each series are also available.

Available in 1TB, 2TB, 3TB and 4TB capacities, Toshiba MG-series drives feature Serial ATA-6Gb/s or SAS-6Gb/s interfaces, 7200rpm rotation speed and feature 64MB DRAM buffers. The highest-capacity model utilizes Toshiba’s latest five-platter mechanical design, which enables 100% increase in capacity over Toshiba’s prior business-critical models while improving the power-profile and operational efficiency in the industry-standard 3.5” form-factor. The new 4TB models also deliver an 18% increase in sustained transfer rates (up to 165MB/s). In addition, the MG-series includes power management features designed to reduce power consumption during off-peak activity periods, helping to reduce operating costs and environmental impact.

The optional SATA self-encrypting (SED) models support fast and secure cryptographic- erase using both the latest T13 Sanitize crypto-scramble protocol and the older T13 ATA Security Erase command protocol. The optional SAS SED models support both the T10 Sanitize crypto-erase feature and the Trusted Computing Group enterprise security sub-classification protocols. These proven, industry-standard security technologies support “nearly instantaneous” cryptographic-erase of user data to enable fast and secure device retirement or re-deployment. Using SEDs can eliminate the need for lengthy data overwrite cycles and reduce IT department expenses associated with secure data destruction and device sanitization.

As business works to keep up with the explosion of unstructured data, large capacity HDDs are crucial tools in IT systems designed to organize and access fast growing reservoirs of valuable information. The massive capacities of the MG family drives are suited to RAID storage and arrays, tiered virtual infrastructures for public and private cloud deployments, archives and disk-based backup.

Volume shipments of Toshiba MG family are scheduled to begin early next year.

Tags: Toshiba, HDD