Seagate Exos X14 14TB HDD Review

1. Introduction2. Seagate Exos X14 14TB3. Testing Methodology4. CrystalDiskMark5. ATTO Disk Benchmark6. IOMeter7. Throughput8. Workload Scenarios9. Real Life File Testing10. Closing Thoughts11. View All Pages

Seagate's 14TB Exos X14 has been designed to meet the growing needs of hyperscale and cloud data centres for ever greater amounts of efficient, cost-effective storage capacity. The drive uses conventional magnetic recording technology (CMR) rather than the latest shingled magnetic recording (SMR).

While it is all well and good having racks and racks of drives offering colossal amounts of storage, the real challenge is to keep the power consumption and therefore the operating costs for said drives as low as possible. The Exos X14 has a couple of tricks up its sleeve to deal with this issue as it supports Seagate's PowerChoice and PowerBalance technologies.

PowerChoice is Seagate's own implementation of the T10/T13 Approved Standard and uses four step by step modes to enhance power savings while the drive is in idle periods longer than a second. Seagate claims that savings up to 54% can be made on drive power consumption in enterprise environments with PowerChoice technology.

Typically PowerChoice is enabled via a SATA Set Feature command (or via the SAS Mode Page for a SAS drive). This allows flexibility so that optimal idle times can be set for a particular storage application. Once the technology has been enabled it puts the drive into deeper and deeper idle power states the longer the drive is idle.

Seagate’s PowerBalance feature helps optimise the IOPS/Watt for even greater efficiency in environments with the focus on random read/write operations. These power saving features, coupled with the overall solid performance from the 14TB drive, make the Exos X14 a very good option for the data centre market.

At the time of writing, a UK price for the Exos X14 wasn't available but current pricing in US dollars is $614.99.

Pros

• Performance.
• Power saving features.
• 5-year warranty.

Cons

• Pricey.

KitGuru says: The Exos X14 adds more capacity to Seagate's enterprise range of hard drives and in its natural environment of a data centre, its power-saving technologies will be a very welcome feature.

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