Toshiba launches 5TB enterprise hard drives
Toshiba has announced the launch of nearline enterprise capacity HDDs with a recording capacity of up to 5TB.
The tech giant says these hard disk drives are the industry's largest for models that are not filled with helium gas. Helium reduces friction and vibration, two elements that limit the storage capacity of hard drives, and also makes such storage consume less power to function. However, while some companies such as HGST have created 6TB HDDs using the gas, helium does have a tendency to leak -- making some drives unusable in the long run.
Toshiba's drives ignore helium completely. The SAS MG04SCA and SATA MG04ACA HDD series, both with an interface speed of 6Gbit/s, will be available in the 3.5-inch form factor and begin shipping in the late half of this month. The new HDD range uses 1TB magnetic disks to achieve a capacity of 5TB as well as an internal data transfer speed of 205MiB/s, which is 24 percent faster than Toshiba's current models.
