Gaming PC

Seagate Launches 2nd Gen Dual-Actuator HDDs: 18TB at 554 MBps

Seagate has quietly expanded its family of Exos Mach.2 hard drives. It features two actuators and four new models with increased capacity and performance. The new Exos 2X16 and 2X18 HDDs offer capacities of 16TB and 18TB (up from 14TB on the previous generation) while matching SATA solid-state drives in terms of sequential read and write speeds.

new Seagate Exos 2X18 Family Two 18 TB HDDs with SATA 6 Gbps and SAS 12 Gbps interfaces, and two 16 TB SKUs with the above interfaces ( storage review). SAS drives always offer an encryption option. In terms of performance, according to Seagate, the Exos 2X18/2X16 SATA versions boast a maximum sustained transfer rate of 554 MBps, while the SAS models are rated at a maximum sustained transfer rate of 545 MBps, making them the fastest HDDs in the world. means All four drives have an average latency of 4.16 ms and 304/560 random read/write IOPS (4K QD16).

The dual-actuator drive uses conventional magnetic recording, features a spindle speed of 7,200 RPM, 256 MB of multi-segment cache, PowerChoice (to manage idle power consumption), PowerBalance (to manage active power consumption), ), and hot-pluggable. Seagate’s hermetically sealed, helium-filled Mach.2 hard drives and two actuators are essentially two logical HDDs (or 9TB or 8TB capacities) that are individually addressable, thus requiring no software implementation on the host side. Needs tweaking.

(Image credit: Seagate)

The main advantage of multi-actuator HDDs is higher sequential and random read performance per TB in addition to higher performance compared to single-actuator hard drives. This tends to decrease as hard drive capacity increases. Increasing the number of independently operating actuators effectively doubles performance, but at the cost of increased power consumption. Seagate’s new Exos 2X16 and Exos 2X18 HDDs consume 7.8W/8W when idle (SATA/SAS) and up to 13.5W/12.8W under heavy load (SATA/SAS). This is the same as the first generation. Mach.2 HDD.

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