Seagate Announces Helium-based 16 TB Exos and IronWolf Hard Drives
by Ganesh T S on June 4, 2019 8:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- Seagate
- HDDs
- Helium HDD
- IronWolf
- Exos
- IronWolf Pro
Seagate is launching their 16 TB CMR (conventional magnetic recording) helium drives today under two product lines - the Exos X for datacenter usage, and the IronWolf / IronWolf Pro for NAS units. The company has been actively shipping the Exos X drives to hyperscale customers, and today's launch is geared more towards the retail market. Similar to the currently available 14TB drives from Seagate, the new 16TB variants also use TDMR (two-dimensional magnetic recording) technology for the heads
The Exos X16 is a 3.5" 7200 RPM drive with SED (self-encrypting drive) options. It is currently the leading capacity point available across all HDD vendors, but, not the first 16 TB drive publicly announced - that credit goes to Toshiba's MG08 series launched in January 2019. Similar to Toshiba's MG08 series, the Seagate 16TB drives also use nine platters to achieve the capacity point.
Seagate claims that the new Exos X16 delivers 33% additional storage per rack compared to the 12 TB variants - thereby reducing the TCO for datacenter operators. The Exos X series is available in both SATA 6Gbps and SAS 12Gbps versions.
The 16 TB drives are also being made available under the IronWolf and IronWolf Pro branding - these drives carry a 300TB/yr workload rating, and deliver benefits typically required in SOHO / SMB NAS systems.
The Exos X16 16TB HDD SATA model (ST16000NM001G) has an MSRP of $629 and is available for purchase today. The dual-port SAS model (ST16000NM002G) is priced at $639. The detailed specifications of the various Exos X16 variants are reproduced in the table below.
The IronWolf Pro (ST16000NE000) has a MSRP of $665 and the IronWolf (ST16000VN001) is priced at $610. These models come with the Rescue Data Recovery Service. The detailed specifications are presented in the table below. The IronWolf 16TB drive is rated for 600K load/unload cycles. The corresponding figure for Exos X16 and the IronWolf Pro were not provided.
Seagate might not be the first to publicly announce a 16TB HDD. However, there is no sign of the previously announced Toshiba MG08 series in the retail market. Seagate's 16TB drives are available for purchase today.
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mukiex - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
Actually, a pair of the Micron 5210 7.68 ION drives comes out to ~$1810, which would be 3x the price of the above 16TB drives. That's closing in on about 3x the price. That's not far away, though still a big distance from just getting two 8TB drives, which would come out to ~$300, a 6x difference.azazel1024 - Wednesday, June 5, 2019 - link
Sure, still a lot more.But as you corrected, SSD price is rapidly approaching HDD price. It won't be a decade or more unless there are some massive advances in magnetic storage. It is more likely to be a year or two before the cheapest per GB SSD surpasses the most expensive per GB HDD. Give it another 3-4 years and the cheapest SSDs are likely to surpass the cheapest HDDs.
shadowx360 - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
Let me know when you can buy any other form of storage media that holds 16TB for equivalent cost. You personally do not have a usage scenario for it, but these prices are dirt cheap to enterprise customers.pugster - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
Part of the problem is the lack of competition because of consolidation in the hard drive industry. Lack of innovation plus the lack of motivation to lower prices for consumers.Beaver M. - Wednesday, June 5, 2019 - link
There are 3 manufacturers who are all very good.Thats plenty of competition.
Its a cartel.
SirMaster - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
Lol they are decreasing. Cost per TB is currently at $16 for 10TB disks and it has never been lower.Eventually 12TB will come out mainstream and probably for a bit less per TB, or at least the same per T at a higher density which is saving money because a HDD slot has a cost. You need to have space, power plug and data plug for each HDD.
When you are connecting dozens of HDDs to a PC each slot has a real noticeable cost to it when you are spending money on SAS controllers and SAS expanders and backplanes.
ballsystemlord - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
10TB for $16 per TB!!! Where??? Newegg has them at $22 per TB refurbished, AM $28.4 new, frys $27 new, and ebay is $18.5 used.BMoon95 - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easystore-10tb-ext...I've bought this one on sale and shucked it at 160. It regularly goes on sale for 160-180, making it 16gb/tb.
Beaver M. - Wednesday, June 5, 2019 - link
That maybe works in NA, and not for everyone, since they are limited. In Europe you wont find such a loophole.piroroadkill - Wednesday, June 5, 2019 - link
The trick is simply to Always Shuck™ and never buy bare drives