Exos 2x14 doubles performance over normal hard drives

Seagate's multi-actuator technology is a simple concept that doubles the performance of a hard drive using two actuators, and the idea is certainly not new. In fact, the company has already developed drives with various actuators in the past, but they were not economically viable. Now with the Exos 2X14, this is a reality.

Seagate Exos 2X14 uses MACH.2 technology of multiple actuators

Now the company has refined the method for effectively doubling the performance of hard drives, which you can read about here.

In each cloud data center, space is often limited, and for many applications providers are trying to get more IOPS from the same slot. The Exos 2X14 14TB connects via SAS and is presented on a server as two 7TB volumes rather than as a single drive. With two actuators, the I / O can be transferred independently of each other on the same hard drive. One actuator addresses the upper half of the drive, while the other actuator addresses the lower half, as can be seen in the image.

At lower cost per GB and higher capacity, hard drives are a good choice for applications such as content delivery networks (CDNs), video streaming, mail servers, backup / shuttle services, Hadoop and other cloud applications.

But, as capacity increases, performance should also increase. Traditional single-actuator hard drives are not sufficient in very high capacities. So Seagate's Exos 2X14 business hard drive incorporates the company's MACH.2 dual-drive technology, and Microsoft seems to be the first to adopt it.

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Seagate partnered with Microsoft architect Aaron Ogus to implement the technology in the Microsoft Cloud, who also worked on the development of the Exos 2X14 directly from its inception.

Seagate's 14TB Exos 2X14 hard drive is the first to incorporate the company 's multi- driver MACH.2 technology, and Microsoft has just completed initial testing on its Azure and Exchange services.

Exos MACH.2 hard drives will be available in various models to suit different business cases, but Seagate has not given specific details on when the drives will open to the general market. We will keep you informed.

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