Toshiba Pioneers 12-Disk HDD Stacking Technology

Toshiba Electronics Europe GmbH announces that Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation (Toshiba) is the first* 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*-class 3.5-inch* HDDs for data centres to the market in 2027.

This 12-disk stacking technology leverages advanced design and analysis technologies that Toshiba has developed in creating thin, compact products, and adds two disks to the standard 10-disk, 3.5-inch disk track used in the company's nearline HDDs. Key advances include the development of new dedicated parts in the stack and the replacement of the current aluminium 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 continue to explode as cloud services expand, streaming video services gain in popularity, and generative AI and data science enjoy rapid growth. Recognising the need to increase storage capacities, Toshiba is also investigating the use of 12-disk stacking technology in conjunction with next-generation Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR). The goal is to develop higher-capacity HDD solutions that keep pace with the ever-growing storage demands from data centres while achieving 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.

*Toshiba research, as of October 14, 2025.
*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, operating system and/or pre-installed software applications, or media content. Actual formatted capacity may vary.
*"3.5-inch" means the form factor of HDDs. They do not indicate the drive's physical size.

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