Extra-large storage: While working on the "heated" future of hard disk technology, Seagate is introducing a new line of magnetic storage units. The company's Exos X24 drives offer extra-large storage capacity for data centers and servers, and they are good enough to work as a foundation for the upcoming HAMR units.
Seagate is refreshing its Exos line with the Exos X24 HDD models. The new hard drives provide the highest density in the industry, the US company states, and are designed to work in hyperscale and enterprise environments with "scale-out data centers." Being an enterprise-oriented technology, the Exos X24 line includes many of the features traditionally expected from this kind of product.
Exos X24 HDD offerings range from 12TB to 24TB 3.5" models, which are based on conventional magnetic recording (CMR) technology to maximize performance and reliability. A single, 28TB model based on the troublesome shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology is offered to selected customers that can work with these kinds of units in cloud environments.
The Exos X24 line packs up to 10 platters in a single drive, with each platter providing 2.4TB of storage density. The 24TB model is the highest density hard drive available in the industry, Seagate states, providing a significant reduction in TCO (total cost of ownership) to enterprise and data center customers.
The list of all-important features available with the new Exos X24 HDDs includes a speed of 7,200 RPM, a 256MB cache, and an areal density of 1,260 Gbit per square inch. The peak sustained transfer rate is 285 megabytes per second, Seagate says, which is in line with HDD units from the previous generation. The drives have a MTBF (meantime between failures) rate of 2.5 million hours, which should be enough to cover the included 5 years of warranty.
The Exos X24 drives also include power efficiency features, Seagate Secure encryption technology for self-encrypting drives (SED), SED-FIPS, and instant secure erase (ISE). The helium-filled HDDs are offered with both SATA and SAS interfaces for additional flexibility and installation options.
Selected Exos X24 drives are being shipped to "key customers" for qualification, while production should ramp up in December. As a side note, Seagate reveals that the Exos X24 platform will provide the same "underlying technology" for the first HDDs based on the Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) tech the company has been working on for years. The new 30TB HAMR units are scheduled to debut in 2024.