Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2014/01/28/tosh_disk_ships/

Toshiba twirls its HAMR, ponders whether to smash spinning rust

Watch out for Seagate's shinglers, boys

By Chris Mellor

Posted in Storage, 28th January 2014 15:03 GMT

Toshiba shipped 22.7 million disk drives in the last calendar 2013, with numbers bulked up by its acquisition of HGST assets in 2012. But where is it going with its disk tech?

WD shipped 63.1 million spinning rust platters in the same period and Seagate managed 53.8 million. Tosh's drive type number splits were:-

Thanks to Aaron Rakers of Stifel Nicolaus for these numbers.

There's still some interesting – and unanswered – questions about Toshiba's drive business concerning the coming switch from perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) to .... well, what exactly?

Will Toshiba employ shingled magnetic recording, go to helium-filled enclosure technology, or jump to HAMR (Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording)? It has to do one or more of these things to enable its 3.5-inch drives to keep up capacity-wise with HGST's helium drives and Seagate's coming 6TB shingled drives.

We watch and wait for the time when Toshiba will talk about its coming drive technology. ®