Welcome to the Toshiba Storage Blog

The first HDD was built in 1956. It weighed over one ton and measured 16 square feet. It contained fifty 24” diameter disks and storage capacity was a mere 5MB. Fast forward to 2025, and Toshiba just announced the industry’s first 12-disk stacking technology measuring only 1.03” x 4” x 5.8” at about 1.6 pounds to propel nearline HDD capacity to 40TB and beyond, but this is just one of Toshiba’s many “firsts” in the industry.

1986 - First laptop PC (T3100) with built-in laptop HDD

1990 - First HDD (MK1122FC) employing glass disks

1997 – First HDD to use GMR (Giant Magnetoresistance) disk read and write heads

2004 – First 0.85” HDD with a capacity of 2GB

2005 – First PMR (Perpendicular Magnetic Recording) 1.8” HDD

2006 – First PMR (Perpendicular Magnetic Recording) 2.5” HDD

2010 – First BPM (Bit Patterned Media) HDD

2017 – First 9-disk Nearline HDD

2021 – First FC-MAMR (Flux-Control Microwave-Assisted Magnetic Recording)

2025 – First 12-disk stacking technology for Nearline HDDs

I’ve been a part of the HDD industry for over 35 years, and to this day, I am amazed at all of the technological innovations. Just when I think we’ve reached a limit, the engineers somehow break through and push the barrier to a new level. I’m not sure when it will happen, but I hope to see a 100TB HDD in my life, and given Toshiba’s track record, I wouldn’t be surprised if Toshiba is the one to add that to their list of “firsts”. 
 

¹ One Gigabyte (1GB) means 10⁹ = 1,000,000,000 bytes and One Terabyte (1TB) means 10¹² = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes using powers of 10. A computer operating system, however, reports storage capacity using powers of 2 for the definition of 1GB = 2³⁰ = 1,073,741,824 bytes and 1TB = 2⁴⁰ = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes and therefore shows less storage capacity. Available storage capacity (including examples of various media files) will vary based on file size, formatting, settings, software and operating system and other factors.