Toshiba 14TB helium-filled HDD to arrive before year-end

Word is going around that Toshiba may become the first company to roll out a helium-filled HDD with a capacity of 14TB. At the moment, the highest-capacity disk you can get in the HDD market has a storage capacity of 12TB but Toshiba is planning to introduce a 14TB version later this year.

There's also an update about the future of hard disk technology at Hexus. Japanese tech company Hoya believes glass will be key to pushing HDD storage capacities to 20TB and beyond. You may not have heard of Hoya before but this is a company that provides materials to HDD makers. The company already supplies glass substrates for use in 2.5" laptop HDDs and created a prototype of a 3.5" HDD that could fit 12 of its glass substrate disks in a 1" thick 3.5" HDD form factor.

Glass platters have several advantages versus the currently used aluminium platters, they are ore rigid, weigh less, and expand less due to heat. Furthermore, Hoya claims glass platters are a better match for heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR):

One further significant advantage for glass substrates going forward is its good fit for heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) tech, which is expected to become mainstream at a future date. HAMR tech requires a substrate with heat resistance of about 700°C. Aluminium substrates struggle above 200°C, asserts Hoya.