Toshiba launches AL14SX Series 15K RPM HDDs

Toshiba announces the new AL14SX Series HDD – a family of 15,000rpm enterprise performance hard disk drives for mission critical servers and storage. Boasting a new 900GB1 capacity model, this drive series features a 50 percent capacity increase and superior performance and power savings compared to Toshiba’s prior AL13SX generation.

he AL14SX Series is available in 300GB, 600GB and 900GB capacities in a compact, 2.5 inch, 15mm form-factor, saving rack space and reducing mission critical storage footprint and operational burden. Available models support 512 native, 4K native or emulated 512 sector length technologies for optimized compatibility with industry standard applications and operating environments. At 290 MiB/s^2,3 with 4Kn/512e model and 5.6 watt power consumption rating, the AL14SX features a 19 percent increase in maximum sustained transfer rate and a 28.7 percent improvement in power efficiency (W/GB) over the prior AL13SX generation.

“The new 900GB AL14SX Enterprise Performance models are a logical extension of our successful AL13SX model line-up and are well matched to the latest generation servers and storage systems,” said Scott Wright, director disk drive product marketing at Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. “With both 512n sector and Advanced Format sector models available, the AL14SX Series provides high performance and capacity for mission critical workloads that demand low HDD latency and superior data integrity.”

The AL14SX Series features optional Sanitize Instant Erase (SIE)⁴ models and leverages Toshiba’s persistent write cache technology for robust data integrity in sudden power-loss environments. Each model is purpose-built for tier one mission critical servers; RAID (redundant array of independent disks) storage; servers hosting databases and transaction-based applications; high-performance computing; and rack-optimized data centers. This is just the latest in Toshiba’s innovative HDD offerings that led to the company being named the fastest growing HDD vendor segment in 2016 over 2015⁵ in a recent IDC market report.