Seagate has spread its 14TB, 7,200rpm helium-filled disk drive tech across the PC, NAS, enterprise capacity and surveillance market sectors.
A few years ago the idea of having a PC or workstation with a 14TB disk drive was fantasy. Dream no more; the 14TB helium-filled BarraCuda Procan be yours for around $580; that’s $41.42/TB.
The drive adds 2TB capacity to the existing 12TB BarraCuda Pro, and like that drive, spins at 7200rpm, has up to 256MB of cache, transfers data at up to 250MB/sec, uses a 6Gbit/s SATA interface, and has a 5-year limited warranty.
Similarly, the IronWolf and IronWolf Pro NAS drives, which topped out at 12TB now max out at 14TB. The Pro version has a higher workload rating than the standard IronWolf: 300TB/year instead of 180TB/year, and a five -year warranty instead of three years.
IronWolf Pro supports up to 24-bay NAS enclosures and capacity ranges from 2TB to 14B, while the ordinary IronWolf supports 1 to 8-bay enclosures and ranges from 1TB to 14TB.
Seagate is pitching Exos X14 as an enterprise capacity-type drive, suitable for hyperscale and cloud storage, and claims the product the lowest power consumption and best performance in its class – up to 261MB/sec sustained data transfer.
Seagate first announced the 14TB Exos in March*, and it’s shipping now. The drive has a 256MB cache, and either a 6Gbit/s SATA or 12Gbit/s SAS interface. Capacities range from 1TB through to 14TB and it has a 550TB/year workload rating and an MTBF of 2.5 million hours.
It has a five-year warranty, always-on encryption and meets the FIPS 140-2, Level 2 Security certification and CC ISO/EIC 15408 compliance standards.
Seagate has built an Exos E 4U106 enclosure, stuffed with Exos X14 drives and having a maximum capacity of 1.4PB, equal to 100 X 14TB Exos X14s.
The fourth 14TB spinner is the SkyHawk surveillance drive. It has a 256NB cache, a 6Gbit/s SATA interface, transfers data at 220MB/sec, a 3-year warranty and 180TB/year workload rating.
Toshiba has a 14TB NAS drive, the MN07, a 12Gbit/s SAS interface 14TB MG07SCA enterprise drive, a 6Gbit/s SATA 14TB MG07 disk.
WD looks to be behind the 14TB curve here, with its shingled 14TB Ultrastar HS14 enterprise capacity drive, with slower data re-write speed than non-shingled drives. WD has a non-shingled Ultrastar 14TB HC530 drive but its Purple surveillance drive tops out at 12TB. We expect a 14TB upgrade shortly as well as one for its Gold nearline, Red NAS and, maybe, Blue desktop drives.
Seagate’s IronWolf and IronWolf Pro 14TB are available at an MSRP of $529.99 and $599.99 respectively. The BarraCuda Pro 14TB is available at an MSRP of $579.99. The SkyHawk14TB is available at an MSRP of $509.99. The Exos X14 is available at an MSRP of $614.99. Get datasheets from Seagate’s website.
* Not to blow our trumpet too loudly but we wrote at the time: “We might expect Seagate to introduce a desktop version of the Exos X14 in a month or few, like a 14TB Barracuda Pro. And then it has a couple of 12TB IronWolf NAS drives and 10TB SkyHawk surveillance disks.” Lo and behold this has come to pass. When something is blindingly obvious you can rely on the storage desk at El Reg to point it out.
