Seagate Exos X16 16TB Enterprise HDD Review

Bohs Hansen / 5 years ago

Pricing and Final Thoughts

Getting 16TB of capacity isn’t cheap, but it isn’t as expensive as you might think either. At the time of this review, the Seagate Exos X16 standard SATA drive is available through Amazon for £639.50. The US version doesn’t have it listed yet, but I’m sure your favourite storage reseller has them.

Final Thoughts

Seagate continues to impress me. They’re sticking to their roadmap and soon we’ll have 20TB drives. But not yet, we’re still only at 16TB capacity. Still, it is seriously impressive when I think back to how impressive 2TB drives were when they arrived. We’ve already upped that capacity 8 times by now and we’re also getting better performance and endurance.

Speaking of performance, the Exos X16 did great. It delivers a solid performance across the entire surface and there isn’t a thing to fault it. It also features a high endurance rating which is important for an enterprise-class drive.

There are various versions available, not just the standard SATA drive which I tested today. There are SAS versions too and both come in various SED models. Get the right drive for the setup, whether you need extra encryption or not.

You can build impressive storage arrays with the Exos X16. A drive such as this allows you to install 33% more capacity per rack when compared to 12TB drives. Not only that, the drives weigh less and consume less power per TB storage. What’s not to love?

Should I Purchase One?

If you need highly reliable and well-performing storage on a big scale, then yes. I can only recommend the Exos X16 based on what I’ve seen while testing it and generally know about the drive. It should perform admirably, whether it is for hyperscale applications and cloud data centres, big data applications, high-capacity density RAID storage, distributed file systems, enterprise backup and restore setups, or centralised surveillance – to just name a few things.