Seagate Unveils Exos X18 18TB Enterprise Hard Drive
by Ganesh T S on September 17, 2020 8:00 AM EST
Seagate recently introduced their 18TB flagship IronWolf Pro hard drive for SMB/SME NAS units. Today, the company is unveiling the Exos enterprise version of the same drive. The Exos X18 goes head-to-head against the Western Digital WD Gold 18TB EAMR-based drives introduced in July. Seagate is also taking the opportunity to expand their application/storage server lineup with a 2U 12-bay model - the Exos AP 2U12 Compute and Storage System.
The Seagate Exos X18, like the IronWolf Pro 18TB, is a 7200 RPM CMR (conventional magnetic recording) drive with a 256MB multi-segmented cache. It contains additional reliability features, and firmware tweaks to provide features geared towards data centers and enterprise storage arrays. These include caching tweaks to optimize the drive for low-latency large data transfers, and a power balance feature that allows customization of the power consumption for the best possible watts/TB given a particular set of workloads. The MTBF increases from 1.2M in the IronWolf Pro to 2.5M hours for the Exos X18.
The maximum sustained disk transfer rate also increases from 260 MBps to 270 MBps. Seagate quotes maximum operating power of 9.4W, with idling average at 5.3W. The IronWolf Pro 18TB idles at 5.2W.
Seagate also has a lineup of products under the Exos Systems tag - these include multi-bay rackmount storage enclosures falling under three different categories - the AP series for compute and storage with an in-built x86 server CPU, the X series RAID enclosures, and the E series JBOD enclosures. Today, the company is introducing a 2U12 AP model - as the name suggests, the 2U rackmount server supports up to 12 3.5" drives and comes with two 10GBASE-T ports and two gigabit ports. The server board is based on the Xeon v5 v4 family, and CPUs with TDP of up to 85W are supported.
Coming back to the Exos X18, Seagate offers it in both SATA and SAS versions. The SATA version has a MSRP of $562, undercutting the WD Gold by $30.
Source: Seagate
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nathanddrews - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
Just curious - is AT going to acknowledge that the RTX 3080 exists?artifex - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16057/nvidia-announ...Dated September 1st.
nathanddrews - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
Right - but I was referring to the launch day itself, supply/demand issues, partner cards, etc. Seemed pretty newsworthy to me. Guess I'll just have to start my own competing website with a comment section with and edit button. XDshabby - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
Ian mentioned Ryan has been dealing with West Coast fires and a delayed test bed.nathanddrews - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
Ah, that sucks for him! No rush, we can't buy them anyway yet.Samus - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
It's interesting how the storage duopoly trades preferential blows among us end-users every decade. During the 90's into the 7200.7's Seagate was the preferred drive, then WD came around and outperformed them in reliability and niche products (like the Raptor) then Hitachi pretty much made both of them irrelevent for a short time before WD bought them and became the preferred brand again, and now with WD's unorthodox SMR practices, anti-shucking efforts, and declining reliability compared to MODERN Seagate... (because hey, a decade ago we all realize Seagate dependability was a joke.)mugen10 - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
Regarding HDD damaged due to transport, I'd recommend to buy HDD from your local store. Ask them to price match or even extra $5 - 10. They bought in bulk, comes in original tray packaging. So it is more secure.My local store told me once they went to pickup parcel from a depot. They saw ppl at depot threw parcels from trucks to floor. They were shocked and change courier services after that. So your small parcel may be treated that way.
Padon mE engrish if any typO err, XD