Seagate's Mach.2 uses multi-actuator technology aims to speed up the rate at which HDDs can transfer data
Seagate, as a leader in storage technology, is releasing to market MACH.2 multi-actuator technology hard disk drives (HDD). Seagate's new Mach.2 is the world's fastest conventional hard drive.
Seagate's Exos 2X14 HDD has a capacity of 14TB, but it consists of two 7TB drives fused together in a hermetically sealed helium-filled chassis.
It is equipped with a 7200 RPM spindle speed, a 256MB multisegmented cache, and a single-port SAS 12GB/s interface.
MACH.2 technology addresses the IOPS/TB challenge by using two actuators that can transfer I/Os independent of each other within a single HDD, creating parallelism that enables up to double the performance.
While traditional HDDs have only one actuator and read/write heads, the company's Mach.2 drives have two to double both their sequential and random read/write speeds.
It has a sustained transfer rate of 524MB/s, making it faster than the Exos 15E900, making this HDD the fastest in the world right now.
The Mach.2's speed comes at a cost of increased power consumption. The Exos 2X14 motor consumes 7.2w in idle mode and up to 13.5 under heavy load. For 3.5-inch HDDs, this amount of power is higher than the standard 12W.
Although the Seagate Mach.2 is listed on the site, it won't come to the public anytime soon, and in the meantime, it's available to select customers.