Seagate quietly updated the Exos Mach.2 series of hard drives. 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 capacities (the previous generation was 14TB).
The new Seagate Exos range of HDDs includes six models, including two 18TB HDDs with SATA 6 Gbps and SAS 12 Gbps interfaces, and two 16TB models with those interfaces, including always-encrypted SAS drives.
As for performance, Seagate says the Exos 2X18/2X16 SATA versions have a maximum sequential transfer rate of 554 MBps, compared to 545 MBps for the SAS models, meaning they are currently the fastest HDDs in the world.
Additionally, the drive has an average latency of 4.16ms and 304/560 random read/write IOPS (4K QD16).
These two hard drives use CMR mode, have a speed of 7200RPM, 256MB multi-segment cache, and fully support Seagate data center technologies, including PowerChoice (manage idle power consumption), PowerBalance (manage active power consumption) and hot plug pull support.
It’s worth mentioning that Seagate Mach.2 hard drives come with two actuators, essentially two HDDs (either 9TB or 8TB capacity) connected in parallel, which are independently addressable, so some software tuning is required on the host side.
By the way, this is a non-retail product designed for data centers, and the pricing has not been announced, because different levels of purchases will have different unit prices. These drives come with a five-year warranty and are designed to work in a 24/7 environment. At the same time, Seagate does not disclose the annual TB workload rating of these HDDs, just take a look.
