Toshiba has reached the 10TB disk drive capacity level without the help of helium, providing OEMs with an alternative to Seagate and WDC.

Its MG06 is a straight 25 per cent capacity upgrade on the MG05 with its six platters. Both are classed as enterprise capacity drives.

The speeds and feeds are:

7,200rpm spin speed

6Gbit/s SATA interface

2.5 million hours mean time to failure (MTTF) rating, 25 per cent better than the MG05's 2 million-hour rating

256MiB buffer, twice as large as the MG05's

6, 8 and 10TB capacity levels

237MiB/s transfer at 10TB and 230MiB/s at 6 and 8TB; MG05 did 230MiB/s

Supports 512e advanced format and 4K sectors

550TB/year total bytes accessed workload

Sanitize Instant Erase (SIE) option model available

We think it has seven platters, judging by the supplied image:

Toshiba MG06 disk drive

That would mean a 1.43TB/platter areal density, the same as our understanding of WDC's 10TB Gold drive.

WDC has 10TB Red and helium-filled Red Pro NAS drives with the former spinning at 5,400rpm and the latter at 7,200rpm. Both are 6Gbit/s SATA drives. Its 10TB Gold data centre nearline drive is also helium-filled and supports the same 550TB/year workload and 2.5 million-hour MTTF as Tosh's MG06. However, it transfers data at a faster 249MB/sec.

Seagate's 10TB drive portfolio includes the BarraCuda Pro, and helium-filled IronWolf/IronWolf Pro NAS drives. All three have the 6Gbit/s SATA interface, a 7,200rpm spin speed at the 10TB level, and, we understand, seven platters. The IronWolves transfer data at up to 214MB/sec and the BarraCuda Pro at 210MB/sec, so Tosh moves data quicker.

We expect Toshiba to add helium-filled 14TB drives to its range in 2018.

Your correspondent has a 1TB iMac with a 1TB external disk drive and is now feeling severely undernourished capacity-wise. ®