Toshiba First in Industry to Verify 12-Disk Stacking Technology for Hard Disk Drives
October 14, 2025
Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation
Kawasaki, Japan – Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation (Toshiba) is the first[1] in the storage industry to verify 12-disk stacking technology for high-capacity hard disk drives (HDDs). By combining this achievement with Microwave-Assisted Magnetic Recording (MAMR) technology, the company aims to introduce 40TB[2]-class 3.5-inch[3] HDDs for data centers to the market in 2027.
This revolutionary stacking technology leverages advanced design and analysis technologies Toshiba has cultivated in developing thin, compact products, and adds two disks to the standard 10-disk, 3.5-inch disk track that the company uses in its nearline HDDs. Key advances include the development of new dedicated parts in the stack, and replacement of the current aluminum substrate medium with a glass substrate that offers greater durability and allows thinner designs. These advances deliver improved mechanical stability and in-plane accuracy, higher density and greater reliability.
Data generation and storage continues to explode as cloud services expand, streaming video services gain in popularity, and generative AI and data science enjoy rapid growth. Recognizing the need to raise storage capacities, Toshiba is also investigating the use of 12-disk stacking technology with next-generation Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR). The goal is higher-capacity HDD solutions that keep up with ever-growing storage demands from data centers while realizing a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) for customers.
Toshiba’s new 12-disk stacking technology will be featured at the IDEMA Symposium on October 17, 2025 in Kawasaki, Japan. For more information, please visit the IDEMA website:
https://www.idema.gr.jp/forumseminar/Symposium/2025/OctoberSymposium2025.pdf
For more information on Toshiba’s full line of HDD storage products, visit https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com.
[1] Toshiba research, as of October 14, 2025
[2] Definition of capacity: One terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes, but storage capacity actually available may vary, depending on operating environment and formatting. Available storage capacity (including examples of various media files) will vary based on file size, formatting, settings, software and operating system and/or pre-installed software applications, or media content. Actual formatted capacity may vary.
[3] "3.5-inch" means the form factor of HDDs. They do not indicate drive's physical size.
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