Seagate launches Exos Mach.2 hard drives: 16/18TB capacity, sequential read and write 554MBps comparable to SATA solid state drives
CTOnews.com November 15 news, Seagate quietly updated the Exos Mach.2 series hard drive. The new Exos 2X16 and 2X18 can rival SATA 3.0 SSDs in sequential read and write speeds.
As you can tell from the name, it will offer both 16TB and 18TB capacity (up from 14TB in the previous generation).
The new Seagate Exos series of mechanical hard drives includes six models, including two 18TB HDDs with SATA 6 Gbps and SAS 12 Gbps interfaces, and two 16TB models with these interfaces, with SAS interface disks supporting Always Encrypt.
As for performance, Seagate says the Exos 2X18/2X16 SATA versions have a maximum continuous transfer rate of 554 MBps, while SAS models have 545 MBps, meaning they are currently the fastest HDDs in the world.
In addition, the drive has an average latency of 4.16 milliseconds and 304/560 random read/write IOPS (4K QD16).
CTOnews.com understands that both drives use CMR mode, have 7200RPM speeds, 256MB multi-segment cache, and fully support Seagate data center technologies, including PowerChoice (managing idle power), PowerBalance (managing active power), and hot plug support.
It's worth mentioning that Seagate Mach.2 hard drives come with two actuators, essentially two HDDs (or 9TB or 8TB capacity) in parallel, which can be addressed independently, so some software tweaks are required on the host side.
Yes, this is a non-retail product designed for data centers. Pricing is not announced because different levels of purchase volume will have different unit prices. These drives come with a five-year warranty and are designed for 24/7 operation. Also, Seagate does not disclose the TB workload rating per year for these HDDs, just take a look.
