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The SATA Drive That Powers 70 Percent of Enterprise Backup and Archive Servers

Every backup NAS, every Veeam repository, every Commvault MediaAgent running on a budget needs drives. Not NVMe drives. Not SAS SSDs. SATA hard drives that deliver capacity per dollar, not IOPS per dollar. The Toshiba MG09 18TB is a 7,200 RPM SATA enterprise drive with CMR recording, 2.5 million hours MTBF, and a 550 TB/year workload rating — at a price per terabyte that is roughly 60 percent of the equivalent SAS model. For backup targets, archives, and cold data tiers, the MG09 is the drive that makes the storage budget work.

Technical Specifications

Parameter	Specification
Capacity	18TB (also: 12TB, 14TB, 16TB in MG09 series)
Form Factor	3.5-inch LFF
Interface	SATA 6Gb/s
Rotational Speed	7,200 RPM
Recording Technology	CMR with Flux-Controlled MAMR (Microwave-Assisted Magnetic Recording)
Cache Buffer	512 MB
Sustained Transfer Rate	Up to 281 MB/s
Average Latency	4.17 ms
MTBF	2,500,000 hours
AFR	0.35% (design target)
Workload Rate Limit	550 TB/year
URE Rate	1 sector per 10^15 bits
Power (Idle / Operating / Standby)	2.2W / 4.1W / 0.9W (SATA, lower power than SAS equivalent)
Sealing	Helium-sealed (Toshiba Helium-Sealed HDD Technology, 5th gen)
Rotational Vibration	RV sensor with feed-forward compensation
Sector Size	512e (512-byte emulation) or 4Kn (selectable at format)
Shock (Operating / Non-Op)	70G / 300G
Physical	147.0 x 101.85 x 26.1 mm, 720g
Temperature	5C to 55C
Warranty	5-year limited (manufacturer)

MG09 SATA vs MG10 SAS — When the Interface Matters and When It Does Not

Feature	MG09 18TB SATA	MG10 20TB SAS
Interface	SATA 6Gb/s	SAS 12Gb/s (dual-port, full-duplex)
Transfer Rate	281 MB/s	270 MB/s
Power (Idle / Operating)	2.2W / 4.1W	4.2W / 7.2W
Dual-Port	No (single-port, single path to RAID controller)	Yes (dual-port, redundant paths — survives HBA failure)
Max Drives per Controller	Typically higher (SATA controllers support more drives)	Lower (SAS expander ports scale differently)
Relative Price	100 percent	~130-140 percent
Best for	Backup targets, archives, cold storage, JBOD, single-controller DAS	Production servers, dual-controller SAN, environments requiring dual-path redundancy

Compatible Platforms

SATA 6Gb/s, compatible with any server or NAS with 3.5-inch SATA bays. Dell PowerEdge R660/R760/R770 (SATA mode), xFusion V7, Lenovo ThinkSystem, Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS. Works with PERC H730/H740/H750/H755/H965i in SATA mode, onboard SATA controllers, and any SATA HBA.