The world’s fastest hard drive is on sale now, nearly matching SATA SSDs like the Samsung 870 QVO - but it ain't cheap

• High speed 18TB Seagate Exos 2X18 HDD narrows gap with SATA SSDs
• Dual actuator Mach.2 technology delivers 554MBps reads at enterprise friendly capacities
• Drive suits workloads needing fast spinning media rather than pure capacity

The Seagate Exos 2X18 hard drive is available to buy from Insight priced at $659.99 - and while it isn’t exactly the Black Friday bargain of the year, that’s $19 off the usual price of $679.

Aimed at data center and enterprise workloads, this 18TB model stands out for more than just raw capacity – it’s fast.

The Exos 2X18 uses Seagate’s Mach.2 dual actuator design, which splits the drive’s mechanics into two independent actuator assemblies that work in parallel. The result is quoted sequential transfer rates of up to 554MBps for reads and 528MBps for writes, roughly double a typical 7200rpm enterprise HDD.

Near SATA SSD speeds

On paper, that puts this hard drive in the same territory as many SATA SSDs such as the Samsung 870 QVO, at least for large sequential transfers.

A SATA SSD is still far quicker for random access and latency sensitive work, but for streaming data or backup jobs the Exos drive narrows the gap far more than standard spinning disks.

The Exos 2X18 uses a 3.5 inch form factor with a SAS 12Gb/s interface and 256MB cache. Average latency is listed at 4.16ms and spindle speed at 7200rpm, backed by a claimed MTBF of 2500000 hours and a five year limited warranty.

The drive is listed at 304 IOPS for 4KB random reads and 560 IOPS for 4KB random writes. Power draw ranges from 8W at idle to 13.5W during sequential reads.

Helium filled construction, PowerBalance and Power Choice features are all aimed at keeping thermals and energy use predictable in dense racks.

Seagate Secure support can help with hardware based data protection in managed environments, although that will naturally depend on host integration.

This kind of performance comes at a steep price for a single 18TB drive. For buyers that only need capacity, slower nearline disks or high capacity SATA SSDs will work out cheaper per terabyte.

For workloads that are still bound to spinning media but benefit from higher throughput, the Exos 2X18 offers an unusual middle ground between traditional HDDs and entry level SATA SSDs.

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