I have a choice between two Toshiba HDDs: MG09ACA18TE and MG07ACA14TE. According to this datasheet, the first one is a 18TB Helium MAMR drive and the second is a 14TB Helium CMR drive.
The 18TB translates to a better $/TB where I live, which is the main reason why I was leaning towards it. Also, Toshiba claims that MAMR technology “has been tried and tested for many years”.
Do you have any knowledge of or experience with MAMR? Is MAMR technology likely to be as reliable as CMR? Or should I get the CMR drive instead?
Thanks
There is no need to use MAMR for anything up to 24TB, because CMR is possible for those sizes. For 18TB, I would use and have used CMR for years, I have tons of 18TB CMR drives in use.
There are 24TB drives incoming ( https://www.seagate.com/content/dam/seagate/en/content-fragments/products/datasheets/exos-x24/exos-x24-DS2080-2307US-en_US.pdf ), everything below that is available. Only above 24TB MAMR or HAMR will probably be necessary, with 28 TB SMR drives on the horizon.