Seagate released Exos M and IronWolf Pro hard drives with capacities up to 30 TB. They are built on the Mozaic 3+ platform and utilize thermal magnetic recording (HAMR) technology. This technology uses a laser to increase storage density. This is the first time Seagate has made Mozaic 3+ hard drives with HAMR available to the mass market.
Specifications of Seagate Exos M and IronWolf Pro 30TB
The disks use a laser to heat the surface up to 450°C, which allows data to be written to areas with increased density. Reading is performed using the 7th generation Spintronic Reader multi-sensor system, which reduces the influence of signals from neighboring tracks and ensures accuracy at high recording densities.
Both models have a standard 3.5-inch form factor, 7200 rpm rotation speed, 512 MB cache, and a maximum data transfer rate of up to 275 MB/s. The new products are available in 28TB and 30TB capacities. A 6Gbps SATA interface is used to connect to the system.
For energy efficiency, PowerChoice and PowerBalance technologies are provided, which allow you to customize power consumption depending on the tasks. The drives consume between 6.9W and 9.5W, making them compatible with most modern storage systems. For example, a 4U server with 100 of these drives can store up to 3 PB of data. A single 42U or 48U rackmount server can hold 30 to 36 PB. The average time between failures is claimed to be 2.5 million hours.
Although the Seagate Exos M and IronWolf Pro hard drives are similar in terms of features, they have different purposes. The Seagate Exos M is designed for deployment in large data centers and cloud infrastructures where vibration resistance and reliability in large arrays are important. It has a reinforced design and built-in vibration sensors.
And IronWolf Pro drives are positioned as a solution for NAS systems, particularly in office environments. They are able to work with video analytics, image recognition, RAG technologies, and local data-based response generation. These drives support round-the-clock operation in multi-disk arrays and handle multi-user workloads well.
Performance tests
Seagate
shared the results of internal tests of Exos M and IronWolf Pro hard drives with capacities up to 30 TB. The sequential read/write throughput test (128 KB) shows that both new products achieve almost the same peak read and write speeds, around 275 MB/s on external tracks. This indicates that the increased platter density in Exos M does not affect the sequential throughput of large blocks. In a random read test of 4KB blocks with a queue depth of 16, the Exos M 30TB delivers approximately 171 IOPS, which is almost the same as the Exos X24. Random write in small blocks remained weaker (346 IOPS) due to the peculiarities of HAMR technology. But in practical workload scenarios, this is not critical — caches or SSDs are usually used for such tasks. In a mixed workload (write + read), Exos M 30TB demonstrated even better results thanks to the new cache architecture.
The IronWolf Pro 30TB delivers similar performance numbers to the Exos M. This model is slightly faster in sequential workloads (128 KB), showing speeds of around 277 MB/s on external tracks. This is slightly faster than its 24TB predecessor. The random read performance is identical for the new product and its predecessor at 84 IOPS. However, the random write performance shows a slight decrease for the 30TB model — 311 IOPS versus 340 IOPS for the 24TB. This indicates a slightly higher write latency caused by the more complex write calibration on HAMR hard drives.
Price
Exos M and IronWolf Pro 30TB and 28TB hard drives are now available for purchase. Prices depend only on capacity and are the same for both models:
- 30 TB — $599.99
- 28 TB — $569.99
Source: techpowerup, tomshardware
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