Seagate EXOS 20TB Review
We live in a digital world, where data is continuously created, shared, and stored. But as the volume of this data grows exponentially every day, where do we put it all? Traditional hard drives are fast running out of space – but Seagate’s new Exos family has arrived to provide our ever-growing need for storage with the highest capacity desktop drive available on the market today. However, it has competition with its own IronWolf Pro 20TB and Western Media’s 20TB HDD with OptiNAND technology.
While Seagate’s IronWolf Pro 20TB is marketed toward the creatives and large enterprises, the EXOS available in 18TB and 20TB targets the cloud data centers with workloads such as virtualization, analytics, or enterprise applications. It provides enhanced performance with advanced error correction and increased time of 2.5 million hours MTBF (mean time between failures).
EXOS X20 price varies from retailer to retailer. On the US Amazon, it is sold for $506, while in some places, it is priced for $669. On Australian online retail shops like rosmancomputers, you can buy it for $1,120; on Mwave, you can get it for $1,149.
Specs
- Capacity: 20TB
- SDR: 285 MB/S
- Technology: Helium
- MTBF: 2.5 million hours
- Interface: SATA 6 Gb/s, 12 Gb/s
- FastFormat (512e/4Kn): Standard, SED
- Spindle Speed: 7,200 RPM
- Average latency: 4.16 ms
- Interface ports: Dual
- Random Read/write (IOPS): 168/550
- Dimensions: 26.1 mm/1.028 in x 101.85 mm
- Weight: 670 g
Design:
The Seagate EXOS X20 isn’t much different from IronWolf Pro in appearance. They basically look the same, but you can tell them apart thanks to the label. It is evident that major differences in the internal system make EXOS X20 more special than IronWolf Pro, like the workload per year. EXO X20 offers a 550TB workload per year, whereas this number decreases to 300TB in IronWolf Pro.
The EXO X20 offers multiple formats for storage like SATA, SED, and SED FIPS (for the SAS model), making it a reliable go-to hard drive for cloud centers. Also, the five years of warranty adds to that customer trust.
Performance:
As per the benchmark tests, EXOS X20 didn’t perform excellently as IronWolf Pro, given the same hardware. However, Seagate states that the EXOS X20 has firmware variations that target a larger customer range, especially the cloud and data centers.
Overall, the drive’s spindle speed is 7,200 RPM, and it operates with a helium sealed technology that reduces friction. Also, offering a 550TB workload per year makes it an excellent choice for the niche market.
The Bottom Line:
EXOS X20 is a good choice for maintaining data on a mechanical hard drive for cloud service providers and data centers. Even though it has a high price listed on official documentation, you’ll find a slightly less price tag on various retailers, less than IronWolf Pro too. It provides ample storage and excellent read/write speed in its capacity.