In recent days, Toshiba has announced the release of two new series of its HDD drives: DT02-V, with a capacity of 2 to 6 TB (Digital Video Recorder/Network Video Recorder) and P300, with a capacity of 4 to 6 TB for home use.
The Japanese company also announced its focus on the corporate segment from 2020 and plans to increase the number of 20 TB disks in enterprise solutions. Until that happens, Toshiba is improving its existing product lines to offer users greater reliability, buffer size and features.
Thus, the HDD DT02-V series for video surveillance systems, which can be conditionally classified as a business segment, has not received significant updates compared to the previously released line , but still has some differences.
The characteristics of the new drives also include 24/7 mode, 128 MiB cache, 600 cycles/000 TB of data recording per year, simultaneous recording of 180 video streams up to 32 Mbit/s each, SATA 4 interface, mean time between failures of 3.0 million hours and low power consumption.
However, in the new version of HDD, the DT02-V line for DVR/NVR received an RPM of 5400 rpm instead of Low spin in MD04ABA-V, as well as an increase in capacity by 1 TB, from 5 to 6 TB on the older model. In fact, this is a 20% increase in working volume compared to the companyβs previous product, which is extremely important for video surveillance systems.
Also, new Toshiba drives support operation in a RAID array of up to 8 HDDs. The only serious operational limitation of new HDDs is temperature conditions. The manufacturer claims a temperature of no higher than +40 degrees Celsius for the disk to operate correctly. Coupled with a low-vibration design, low power consumption of 3,5 W and a long dubbing resource, the DT02-V series for DVR/NVR systems looks very attractive.
New HDDs will hit the market in stages: first, βmediumβ 4 TB models went on sale, and they are available for purchase today. In January 2020, 6 TB drives will also become available, and the junior model of the DT02-V series will only be available for purchase in March 2020.
New consumer drives also received a volume expansion to 6 TB, but the changes in them are more significant.
First: the disk cache was increased from 64 to 128 MiB. Second: the drives are equipped with a special protection system against data loss upon impact, which increases the chances of HDD survival. The latter is extremely attractive specifically for the consumer segment, in which there are frequent cases of blows to the case, transfer or unskilled assembly of the PC and, accordingly, careless handling of the HDD. Also, the older model is equipped with a 7200 rpm drive (the younger 4 TB model still operates at average speeds of 5400 rpm).
It is a little surprising that, according to data from the official Toshiba website, it is the older 300 TB P6 models that have the most efficient energy consumption:
Unlike their βcorporateβ counterparts of the DT02-V series, P300 drives are less sensitive to temperature conditions, which is critical for home workstations. Thus, the operating temperature range is indicated from 0 to +65 degrees Celsius, and the storage temperature is from -40 to +70 degrees Celsius.
It is quite possible that we will not expect any updates from Toshiba for the consumer segment in the near future. According to ( presentation), the Japanese giant will focus on the enterprise segment, in which it is losing to its main competitors Seagate and Western Digital in terms of market share. In the consumer segment, and specifically in sales of 2,5β³ form factor laptop drives, Toshiba is the leader, so the companyβs capacity will be transferred to work with businesses.
In 2019, the revenue of all three HDD sales companies dropped significantly due to a noticeable reduction in the cost of SSD drives. However, from 2020, a significant increase in demand for corporate solutions for short-term and long-term storage and exchange of large volumes of data in data centers is expected.
This growth is associated with the active deployment of 5G networks in the United States and a number of other countries. We previously mentioned this problem in the article about .
Since SSDs will not be able to cover the needs of telecom operators and services for storing and transmitting data in the expected volumes, it will be HHD manufacturers who will occupy the resulting niche with their high-capacity products.
That is why Toshiba is focused on increasing the share of super-capacity drives of 20 TB. Currently they are used in less than 10% of the company's long-term storage solutions, but the Japanese plan to increase this figure to 2023% by 50. Toshiba is also focused on expanding its product line for small and medium-sized data centers, as well as for video surveillance systems. We can already see real solutions for the last mentioned segment.
Source: habr.com