Toshiba Corporation - Experts & Thought Leaders

Toshiba Electronics Europe GmbH (Toshiba) announces a new video that showcases its successful partnership with PROMISE Technology to deliver enhanced data storage capabilities to CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, home to the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The video explores how the collaborative partnership has been instrumental in fulfilling CERN’s mission by delivering robust storage systems and cutting-edge hard drives to support its groundbreaking research. Robust and reliable data storage The LHC’s collision detectors, which run 24/7, generate approximately 1TB of data per minute, necessitating robust and reliable data storage. Since 2008, CERN has used PROMISE Technology’s 24-bay JBOD VTrak J5800 HDD enclosures, with some of the earliest systems still operational. CERN has also used Toshiba’s Enterprise Capacity HDDs, starting with capacities of 4TB over ten years ago to the MG09 Series Enterprise Capacity 18TB HDDs. Storage capacity This storage system has reached a capacity of more than one Exabyte, which is one thousand Petabytes During this time, the two companies supported CERN in scaling up the storage capacity at its central data centre, which sends this data to more than 170 research institutes around the world for analysis. This storage system has reached a capacity of more than one Exabyte, which is one thousand Petabytes or a million Terabytes, realised with more than 120,000 HDDs sitting in more than 4,000 JBOD enclosures. VTrak J5960 Building on this success, PROMISE Technology developed a new 60-bay JBOD model, the VTrak J5960. The JBOD storage system incorporates 'Greenboost' technology, a suite of energy-saving innovations that can reduce power consumption by up to 30%. In the HDD application lab, Toshiba completed early testing of PROMISE Technology’s 60-bay JBOD with its Enterprise Capacity MG10 Series 20TB HDDs, and confirmed data- and cooling performance and power efficiency, which aligns with the global push towards more sustainable and environmentally friendly data management practices. Storage, reliability, and efficiency About this collaboration achievement in data storage Eric Bonfillou, Deputy Group Leader of CERN’s IT Fabric group states, “In our quest to unravel the mysteries of the universe, we need partners who understand the importance of data storage, reliability, and efficiency with solutions tailored to our unique needs.” “The energy crisis is now a real challenge to all enterprises, including CERN,” Alice Chang, Chief Marketing Officer, PROMISE Technology. “The VTrak J5960 offers a well-rounded solution to solve this dilemma, and we are confident that Toshiba’s Enterprise Capacity HDDs, installed and operated in this JBOD, will support CERN’s future need for growing data storage capacity in a reliable and energy-efficient way.” Cost-effective and energy-efficient “At Toshiba, we are very proud to support CERN’s activities with Enterprise Capacity HDDs,” says Rainer W. Kaese, Senior Manager of Business Development, Storage Products Division at Toshiba. “We continue to develop higher capacities, up to 30TB and beyond, as HDDs are and will remain essential for storing the exabytes of data that CERN and the entire world produce in a cost-effective and energy-efficient manner.” Future of data storage While the video celebrates the collaborative work with CERN, the focus remains on the technological advancements and the future of data storage at the research facility. Toshiba and PROMISE Technology are committed to providing solutions that ensure the LHC’s research continues without interruption, contributing to the understanding of the universe.

Toshiba Electronics Europe GmbH (Toshiba) announces its next-generation S300 Pro Surveillance Hard Disk Drives (HDDs), targeting the latest requirements in the surveillance storage market. With capacities up to 10TB and double the buffer size, the upgraded HDDs with conventional magnetic recording (CMR) technology enable surveillance system integrators, system installation providers, and end users to record, store and analyse their video streams from up to 64 high-definition (HD) cameras. S300 Pro Surveillance HDDs The highly scalable, 3.5-inch S300 Pro Surveillance HDDs, with capacity options of 4TB, 6TB, 8TB, and 10TB, support up to 24 bays, making them an excellent fit for large-scale video recording systems, delivering reliable operation even in the most demanding environments. Additionally, compared to the previous generation, the new S300 Pro provides a higher maximum sustained transfer speed of 268MiB/s and doubles the cache buffer size to 512MiB. The S300 Pro HDDs also reduce power consumption, delivering improved total cost of ownership (TCO). Key upgrades The next-generation S300 Pro’s extended warranty period, from 3 to 5 years, demonstrates Toshiba’s durability With 24/7 operation, an enhanced annual workload of 300TB, and a mean time to failure (MTTF) of up to 1.2 million hours, the S300 Pro can handle the increasing video analysis demands of mission-critical surveillance footage. The next-generation S300 Pro’s extended warranty period, from 3 to 5 years, demonstrates Toshiba’s high durability and engineering quality of its HDDs. Performance, durability, and 24/7 reliability "Specially optimised for large-scale video surveillance operations, where advanced video analytics, face recognition, and editing are mission-critical features, Toshiba’s next-generation S300 Pro delivers enhanced performance, durability, and 24/7 reliability," says Larry Martinez-Palomo, Vice President, Head of Storage Products Division, Toshiba. He adds, "The next-generation S300 Pro Surveillance HDDs demonstrate Toshiba’s commitment to continuously collaborate with industry-renowned video surveillance system manufacturers and empower our partners and customers to benefit from our range of high-quality Surveillance HDD portfolio." The next-generation S300 Pro Surveillance HDDs will be available in CQ4 2024.

Hard disk drives (HDDs) are a tried and trusted data storage technology that has stood the test of time. Critical benefits such as high capacities and low cost per capacity unit mean they provide an excellent foundation for data storage strategies in various industries and applications such as data centres, surveillance, gaming, and cloud computing. HDD trends So, what does the future hold for HDDs? Can they retain their relevance in the face of other storage solutions? Here, Toshiba presents some of the significant trends that will determine the role of HDDs in the data-driven era. 1) Navigating the balancing act between capacity and cost There has been intense research and development effort to ensure that HDDs remain competitive in the medium term. Recently, Toshiba launched the 22TB MG10F, a conventional magnetic recording HDD that leverages a 10-disk helium-sealed design, adding a 10 percent capacity increase to the 3.5-inch form-factor MG10 range. Importantly, though, engineers have managed to pack more terabytes into the same form factor and the same power consumption at roughly the same cost. This is a critical point. A gap in cost per capacity HDDs may reach 40 or even 50 terabytes without approaching comparable costs with flash storage At present, HDDs maintain a gap in cost per capacity with flash storage of around a factor of seven. This advantage remains the lifeline of the HDD. There is little point in adding more capacity if costs rise exponentially. Indeed, these efforts mean HDDs may reach 40 or even 50 terabytes without approaching comparable costs with flash storage. Demand for high-capacity Two other factors must also be considered. Firstly, there needs to be a demand for higher capacity, without it, product development becomes pointless. This market driver is a certainty. Even if HDDs reached as high as 100 terabytes of capacity, Toshiba's data-driven society means would fill it in no time at all. Secondly, it has to be technically achievable.  Toshiba continues to invest in delivering these incremental advances, with teams of engineers and materials scientists performing qualification tests and other procedures daily. This effort is ongoing and will remain while the demand for HDDs with higher capacities continues. 2) Meeting the sustainability demands of data centre operators Data centres still depend on HDDs as the prevalent storage devices for hyperscale facilities serving the cloud. Here, the 2TB capacity increase mentioned above represents a significant advance, as higher capacities in the same form factor offer substantial advantages in rack space in often space-constrained urban locations. Increasingly, data centres combine individual HDDs through Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) techniques that can create larger and speedier storage solutions. It is common to see 24 HDDs integrated into one housing unit, and this is likely to keep rising – possibly to somewhere in the region of 60 to 120. Significant trend in data centres Trend in data centres is sustainability, and there are two distinct ways that HDDs can make a difference The second significant trend in data centres is sustainability, and there are two distinct ways that HDDs can make a difference. Firstly, regarding energy efficiency, if users want to spin a storage disk at a certain speed and access it at a specific rate, they inevitably come up against the laws of physics, typically requiring about 10 watts per unit.  Helium technology Helium technology launched several years back helped cut that figure to around 7-8 watts. But the only way to become more energy-efficient than that is to introduce more capacity for those 10 watts which recent advances have helped deliver. Also, data centre engineers are thinking about how to use the HDD in a more power-optimised way, possibly through idle or power-down modes. Recycling The other notable sustainability trend is recycling. The first wave of HDD deployments in data centres for the cloud took place six or seven years ago, and those components are now coming to the end of their lifecycle and are being decommissioned. HDDs are comprised of aluminium and copper, making them much easier to recycle than other components and materials such as PCBs, chips, and plastics. Consequently, Toshiba expects HDDs to become an integral part of the circular economy based on services such as recycling and reuse. 3) Providing storage solutions advice to end users Toshiba’s European HDD laboratory can combine multiple HDD combinations to test function and performance Most HDDs go into cloud and enterprise applications, and these end users increasingly expect HDD suppliers to act as collaborative partners to help establish the best technologies and configurations for their specific deployments. To meet this need, Toshiba’s European HDD laboratory can combine multiple HDD combinations to test function and performance. Achieving performance rate Most recently, this has seen the installation of a high-capacity top-loading JBOD enclosure with 78 x 18TB HDDs, giving a total capacity of 1.4 petabytes, which is connected to a server. This infrastructure makes it possible to exercise one single HDD to establish its performance rate per MB/sec. Then, it is possible to switch to any combination of the 78 units, adding them incrementally and accurately measuring the total outputs. With all 78 HDDs active, the performance is rated at almost 17 GB/sec. Trade-off calculations This infrastructure can also be used to perform detailed trade-off calculations, helping end users settle on the correct configuration for the task at hand. Without it, they might have to invest in their ports and HDDs as test samples, which is not always cost-effective. Recent activities at the Toshiba Electronics Europe lab have seen the testing of HDD combinations in a way that is fast enough for archiving data, video streaming for online data like navigation systems, and operating web shops. This collaborative activity is crucial for enterprises deploying HDDs in large-scale applications ultimately extending the lifespan of this ever-evolving technology. 4) Retaining relevance in write-intensive surveillance applications The surveillance sector continues to have a high requirement for data storage, with the trend towards higher-quality The surveillance sector continues to have a high requirement for data storage, with the trend towards higher-quality, 24/7 video streams supported by affordable hardware that is reliable enough to ensure operation. Historically, if there is a requirement for a storage element inside the camera itself, this has typically been a flash component, while the central recorder often comprises one or more HDDs. GDPR requirements In certain parts of the world, such as central Europe, where GDPR requirements mean only a small amount of recording can be retained for a short period, system vendors may consider a low-capacity SSD for that central storage too as that small capacity means it achieves cost parity with HDD in specific scenarios. However, such a setup does not overcome the challenges of write-intensive operations. High over-ride cycles where data can only be kept for a few days would quickly wear out a flash component. There are no such constraints for HDDs. Benefits Other benefits also come to the fore. Surveillance systems always deal with sequential write operations, in which data is written continuously. HDDs excel at sequential write performance, making them the obvious solution for the sustained and sequential nature of video recording. Also, HDDs are non-volatile storage devices that retain data even when the power is turned off. This is an essential consideration for surveillance systems, where data integrity and preservation are required in case of power outages or unexpected system shutdowns. Ultimately, then, HDDs will continue to play an important role in surveillance. Maintaining a future role for HDDs So, it is clear that HDDs do have a bright future. Toshiba remains committed to investing in research and development to drive incremental advances while expanding production capacity to meet demand. And it will be through continued collaboration with data centre equipment vendors, surveillance systems integrators, and computing OEMs that HDDs will continue to have a central role to play in the data-driven era.