For those looking at density, Seagate is shipping new 20TB drives. We are slowly getting new capacity tiers. Recently we covered Western Digital 20TB ePMR Hard Drives with OptiNAND and WD Gold 16TB 18TB and 20TB models. Seagate is now getting into shipping 20TB hard drives with a duo intended for storage servers and NAS gear.
Seagate Exos X20 and IronWolf Pro 20TB HDDs Shipping
In search of more capacity, Seagate announced that it will be shipping two 20TB drives this month, just making it in 2021. For higher-end NAS units, there is the IronWolf Pro 20TB drive. For larger storage servers, there is the Seagate Exos X20.
The Seagate Exos X20 is available in 18TB and 20TB capacities with both SATA 6Gbps and SAS 12Gbps models available. Here is the spec sheet for these:
The Seagate IronWolf Pro 20TB is part of the performance-optimized NAS line. That is different segmentation from the Exos X20. The Exos X20 is more for storage servers and arrays. The IronWolf Pro 20TB falls into the category of personal NAS storage at Seagate. Here are the specs for the IronWolf Pro:
Both have a maximum sustained transfer rate of 285MB/s, but the IronWolf Pro does not have a SAS3 option. One interesting note is that the AFR reliability rating of the Exos drive is much higher and it also uses considerably less power.
Final Words
Pricing is set to be $669.99 for the Exos X20 20TB and $649.99 for the IronWolf Pro 20TB. Those are list prices and we have seen supply challenges mean that drives do not always sell for list. One of the biggest benefits we tend to see is that as new capacity points become available and somewhat competitive it sometimes pushes down prices of lower capacity drives. We hope that is the case with this new release.
Damn, with “only” 50 of these you can have 1 PB at home. Feasible. I remember:
– My first hard disk, an Apple ProFile (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_ProFile) with a glorious size of 5MB for $3,500 back in the early 80s. Fortunately my boss paid for it. I was a “computer god” of the neighborhood by owning such an advanced piece of hardware.
– Having to pair two disks in RAID 0 to be able to do non-linear video editing that required a minimum of 25MB/s IO throughput.
– Reaching a total of 1TB of storage at home for the first time.
Anyway, my ultimate first computer storage was punched tapes at school.
As a software developer and then VP, I still can’t shake off the idea that hardware people are going faster than us on the path of progress, yet at the same time, we always use and reach the limits of modern hardware and screaming for more.
16tb Exos is certain in the sweet spot for these larger drives at ~$19.40 per TB. This is $33.50 per TB. I’m sure it won’t sell for MSRP but no way will it sell for anywhere around $20 per TB anytime in the near future.
@Paulbme: Yeah, the 16TB is perfect. As i now run 8TB exclusively since years, i always wanted to wait to upgrade until 16TB. Nice, easy math.. ;)
But i will switch from Seagate Ironwolfs to the Toshiba Enterprise Drives. Much cheaper and at least as reliable and quiet if not much better.
16TB Toshiba Enterprise drives did go on sale here in Germany for about 220-250. And now that POS Chia mining is finally not driving up prices anymore, it looks quite good for anyone who wants to upgrade.
Still WAY overpriced though.
Nowadays one can have 18TB Toshiba Enterprise drive for €300 while these 20TB models go for €500 and more.
Methinks HDDs won’t go extinct for years to come, but if one is thinking about replacing existing ones, it might be prudent to wait a bit for new tech to come out.
I am waiting for multihead ( 2 heads per surface) and multi-level actuation, so that all heads can track their track simultaneously and do their R/W stream. And for new PCIe-like intreface to become standard for new HDDs.
This will fix most of current problems ( except access time) and make them great for storage and backup.
@TDCIYB – Man, <$250 for 16tb is a great price! Haven't seen anything like that for new drives here in the states. I'd jump on those too. My 16tb's array was upgrades from my 8tb too. So I guess I'll have to wait until the 32tb drives come out until I can upgrade again. :)