Seagate usually doesn’t unveil its new products at trade shows because firstly, the design-in cycles of new storage devices are pretty long and secondly, the company would rather meet the schedule of its partners rather than align it with trade shows, which could otherwise miss targets that needed to be met by the company. Seagate showcased its flagship enterprise-class 14TB Exos hard drive at the Computex 2018, with the being announced during the beginning of the year.
Seagate Might Also Commit to Providing 14TB Storage Solutions to Consumers in the Near Future
Currently, Seagate is in the process of sampling the 14TB Exos and they are ready to begin mass shipments for interested clients such as large-scale data centers. Shipment is expected to begin during the second half of 2018.
Related Seagate Shows off 14TB Helium Exos X14 Enterprise, Releasing Fully This Summer
However, the 14TB Exos isn’t just for data centers and enterprises. The 8-platter 14TB hard drive platform with TDMR will also be launched in other segments by the end of 2018 and regular consumers will also be able to purchase it, though it will cost a pretty penny for incorporating 14TB on a single HDD. Even though Seagate hasn’t committed to anything yet, it is expected that the IronWolf Pro 14TB and the Barracuda Pro 14TB will be launched in the market during the last quarter of this year.
For use in high-performance PCs and NAS solutions, some firmware would need to be developed by Seagate and the company will also have to make some hardware changes to the Exos 14TB for use in the aforementioned systems. The company is currently working on it and the refined 14TB hard drives are expected to hit the market in the next quarter.
The Exos 14 is based on 8 PMR platters and it uses TDMR heads. It is basically targeted to data centers and do not employ shingled magnetic recording. The HDDs are helium-filled and are based on the latest generation perpendicular magnetic recording. Seagate has not provided details such as MTBF timings, along with speeds, but the company will most likely be providing details on these products later down the road.
Images credit: Anandtech
