Toshiba has plans to make HDDs that can hold 30TB and more.

SDK is the world's biggest independent maker of hard drive platters. It has been said that it has made media with MAS-MAMR (microwave assisted switching-microwave assisted magnetic recording). Toshiba, one of the main customers of SDK, will be able to make HDDs that can hold more than 30TB.

MAS-MAMR is a type of technology that uses microwaves to change the magnetic coercivity of hard drive media. With MAS-MAMR, coercivity changes even more, allowing even narrower tracks and thus more area density. The new technology was made by Showa Denko, TDK, and Toshiba. They worked together to make the media with a new magnetic, read/write heads with two spin-injection layers, and Toshiba (drives). The three companies didn't say what the actual density was, but they said that MAS-MAMR will allow Toshiba to make HDDs that can hold more than 30TB. As for how many platters these drives will have, they didn't say how many there will be.

It's a big deal for HDD makers to change platters and read/write heads, but it's not for everyone. With heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), Seagate had to make a lot of changes to the design of its hard drives. Typically, companies only change one important part of their drives. Apparently, Toshiba will have the same problems with MAS-MAMR. The good news is that the technology seems to grow, so it will be used for a long time. Toshiba has already started shipping 18TB MAMR-based HDDs for nearline and high-end NAS applications. These HDDs have already been sold. Plates and heads from MAS-MAMR will be used in the company's second-generation drives, which will be called MAMR drives. It's a shame, but Toshiba doesn't say when these drives will be on the market.

To make hard drives bigger, manufacturers need to use different energy-assisted magnetic recording (EAMR) technologies. This is because perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) is running out of steam. Seagate was the first company to use HAMR, but now only a few people can buy HDDs that use this new method. This is not the case with Western Digital. Instead, the HGST division of the company used MAMR for its commercial hard drives at first, but last year it switched to energy-assisted PMR (ePMR).