Seagate EXOS 20TB

Mark Pickavance is stunned by the storage but not the endurance of this drive. The cost is another matter altogether, mind...

- Mark Pickavance

20TB is an awful lot of .config files.

SPECS

Size: 20TB

Interface: SATA or SAS

RPM: 7,200

Max rate: 285MB/s

Power: 5.4w idle, 9.4w max

Design: Helium sealed

Cache: 256MB

MTBF: 2.5M hours

Warranty: Five years

The Seagate EXOS 20TB is targeted at those with cloud data centres, massive scale-out data centre applications, bulk storage and enterprise NAS systems. Whereas the Iron Wolf Pro was meant for commercial and Enterprise NAS to support the needs of Creative Pro and Medium-to-Large businesses. They look practically identical from the outside, so is the EXOS 20TB just wearing a different hat from its Iron Wolf Pro brother?

The Seagate EXOS 20TB sells for an eye-watering £480. We found the 18TB model for £295. That's a 70 per cent price increase for a 2TB, or 11 per cent increase in capacity. To the casual observer, this is the same 670g block of metal that houses a CMR (conventional magnetic recording) 7,200RPM hard drive with 10 2TB platters and 20 heads, functioning within a factory-sealed helium atmosphere.

All the differences are internal, and based on the lack of weight difference. What differences exist are most likely firmware based rather than physical. Seagate has tuned the EXOS for data centre use, where high-capacity RAID arrays are used for big data applications, distributed file systems and disaster recovery platforms.