INTRODUCTION

   Almost two years ago and while we were testing some of the very first 12TB 3.5" hard disk drives to hit the market by Seagate we "predicted" that 20TB models would be possible by 2020 largely thanks to the upcoming heat assisted magnetic recording technology (or HAMR for short - Western Digital on the other hand has invested heavily in their very own MAMR technology - microwave assisted magnetic recording) which basically increases storage density by quite a bit compared to shingled magnetic recording (SMR) and two-dimensional magnetic recording (TDMR). In early 2017 Seagate also announced that early drives featuring that technology made their way to several of their key partners so we were quite anxious to see what they’ve been working on over the past decade or so. Well it may have taken slightly longer for Seagate to release their HAMR drives to the public but we still have their brand new 16TB models of the EXOS X16, IronWolf Pro and IronWolf lines announced in early June. Well unlike the 14TB line by Seagate this time over we managed to get all three models and we'll be starting our tests with the EXOS X16 16TB.

   Seagate is the global leader in data storage solutions, developing amazing products that enable people and businesses around the world to create, share and preserve their most critical memories and business data. Over the years the amount of information stored has grown from megabytes all the way to geopbytes, confirming the need to successfully store and access huge amounts of data. As demand for storage technology grows the need for greater efficiency and more advanced capabilities continues to evolve.

   The EXOS X16 Enterprise line by Seagate is primarily aimed towards hyperscale applications, data centres and centralised surveillance and currently includes both SATA/SAS Helium based models in 14/16TB capacities (EXOS X12 line includes 12TB models and the X10 line includes 10/8TB models). Under the hood of the new EXOS X16 16TB we find a total of 9 platters (adding to a total usable storage space of 14901.98GB) that spin at 7200RPM and are paired with a total of 18 read/write heads and 256MB of DRAM cache. Of course, since the EXOS X16 is the top Enterprise line by Seagate currently it also features several state-of-the-art technologies including PowerBalance (allows for reduced power consumption with balanced performance levels), PowerChoice (improved power and cooling efficiency based on the T10/T13 power management standards), FastFormat (supports fast formatting of both legacy 512-byte emulation and 4K native sizes), Secure (for self-encryption drives like the EXOS X16) and RAID Rebuild (faster RAID recovery). Seagate also covers the entire EXOS X16 line with a 5 year limited warranty and reports an MTBF (mean time between failures) of 2.5 million hours and an endurance number of 550 TB/yr (TBW).