Seagate Reveals Its Exos X18 HDDs: 18 TB for Exascalers and Datacenters

Seagate has formally announced its Exos X18 family of datacenter-grade hard drives that it has been shipping to select clients for a while now. The HDDs are designed for enterprise and hyperscale datacenters that demand maximum storage density available today, but these products may also be used for high-end NAS and even desktops.

The Exos X18: Improving Capacity and Performance

The 3.5-inch Seagate Exos X18 family includes 16 TB and 18 TB hard drives that are based on the company’s fifth-generation helium-filled HDD platform. This platform relies on nine perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) platters (featuring a capacity of up to 2 TB) as well as 18 heads that use two-dimensional magnetic recording (TDMR) technology to prevent adjacent track interference and reliably read data at a high track pitch density. The drives feature a 7200 RPM spindle speed as well as a multi-segmented…